European Affordable Housing Consortium, SHAPE-EU

Individual preparation for employment by Groupe 3F

Paris Human Resources
Responsible Housing Award

Description

Context

Local personnel represent nearly half of the company’s staff, i.e.
1,300 caretakers in 2015. This situation requires increased flexibility
by the Human Resources Department (HRD) in terms of the recruitment processes for this position.
The role of the caretakers is even more crucial as 3F has decided to
turn them into a highly versatile stakeholder, requiring specific skills
and abilities, and entrusted with a broad variety of tasks such as managing relationships with tenants, managing technical interventions and supervising service providers, housekeeping and waste management etc.
In light of these two observations, job versatility and volume, the
HRD regularly finds it difficult to fill certain positions, hence this project to implement a new recruitment approach.

The process unfolds in a number of steps:
▶ Collective information meeting for a presentation of the
company and of the caretaker job with around 150 participants per session
▶ Pre-selection by Pôle Emploi via the Simulation Recruitment Method validating the key skills
▶ Selection interview based on the candidates’ motivation
▶ Steering committee to monitor training
▶ Evaluation grids at different stages of the theoretical and practical training.

Issues tackled

The project wants to anticipate its recruitment needs for caretakers’ positions, while contributing to retraining of the long-term unemployed, the Human Resources Department of Groupe 3F developed a recruitment system along with the training department of the organisation. This system, undertaken in partnership with Pôle Emploi (French employment agency) and Afpols (training organisation), gives job seekers access to a nationally recognised certified training course and guarantees job offer within Groupe 3F.
So, it meets a number of key requirements:
▶ facilitating personnel recruitment with a large number of recurring job vacancies;
▶ assessing the applicants’ abilities before hiring them;
▶ making the recruitment process more reliable;
▶ ensuring personnel are operational as soon as they take up a position and trained within the company’s business procedures
and needs;
▶ developing the employability of job seekers.

With this approach, 3F contributes to public employment and integration policies by going far beyond regulatory measures but also
responds to the training policy adopted by 3F to strengthen the skills of its employees, enhancing their employability.

Actors involved

Actions carried out

Results

Based on the positive feedback from the first POEI three additional mechanisms have been set up since, i.e. on average 2 per year, with a very satisfactory recruitment rate of 90%.
Every new caretaker fully completed their trial period. Several success factors have been identified:
▶ Access to a training programme adapted by 3F and the
training organisation, resulting in the award of a nationally recognised certification;
▶ Coherence between job seekers and the company’s needs in terms of positions;
▶ Synergy between the Training department and the Employment department;
▶ Individual monitoring;
▶ Significant trainee involvement due to a strong sense of belonging to the company from the start of the process,
and the prospect of a permanent job;
▶ Motivation of 3F’s personnel associated with the training of their future colleague and creation of a network of care takers from the same PO EI cohort.

On the other hand, there is room for improvement as far as the following issues are concerned:
▶ Burdensome administrative management due to multiple partners involved;
▶ The trainees’ significant involvement highlighted above can be a constraint, resulting in impatience and high expectations when the jobs are actually offered.

Why it works

POEI is an innovative mechanism for the low-income housing sector and the caretaker profession in the Ile-de-France region. 3F is
the region’s only social landlord to organise these training and recruitment programmes devoting part of its training budget to them
(a total training budget of €47,000).
3F also invests in trainees who are given a fully funded training course and the option of a permanent job from which they are free to withdraw at any time. 3F has established a contract of confidence with the participants, committing to wait for them for nearly three months so that, in return, they can be more operational when they take up the position.

Scale

local https://www.groupe3f.fr