1. First meeting of Human resources working group
A French contribution on « age management » topics

2. A demographic challenge in the French civil service
Observation : A total of 45% of current payroll will have retired until 2015

3. Graph1: Age structure in the public sector

4. Transform the demographic challenge into opportunity
Objectives:
- Soften the impact of demographic shock
Overturn to adjust the newly hired in adequacy with the needs of public sector
Development of a provisional HR management
Risks:
Recruitment hurdles: maintain the attractivity of civil service and diversify the sources of recruitment
A poor reactivity and a weak management in dispatching people between accurate positions according to skills and competencies at both central and local level
A poor management of sharing knowledge and skills between generations

5. Accompany the changes by adapted structural reforms
New HR management tools:
HR provisional management
Budgetary and HR decentralization making manager more accountable
From a logic of “corps” towards a logic of professional content and competencies
To reshuffle the status in order :
to improve the fluidity of the professional paths
to develop mobility prospects for public employees
to facilitate for public employees the access to the training helping them to adapt more easily to changes

6. HR management Two examples
HR provisional management
A semi-annual framework
A reflection about the main changes for state’s mission
Set up training mechanisms aimed at maintaining the professional capability of the civil servants, particularly the ageing ones
* Develop a “professional
skill” approach
Enriching a civil service based on a corps system by designing for each jobs a professional content
Determining cluster jobs or positions requiring similar skills or competencies
Skills and professional tropisms should be correctly taken into account

7. Evolution of the legal framework Three examples
The suppression of the age limit for access to the competitive examination
Make the sources of recruitment more diversified
Promote the professional reorientation
Life long vocational training for civil servants:
Validation of acquired knowledge and experience as a substitute of academic attainment
Recognition of professional experience
Ensure individual access to lifelong training
Promote civil servants mobility between the administrative bodies
Enhance the merging process of the administrative “corps”
A new frame of provisions to improve the mobility (detachment, secondment)
Mobility between public and private sector workers: new rules about ethics, transparency, impartiality

8. Conclusion : No age discrimination in the public sector
No specific policy for senior civil servants
It is necessary to ensure « a normal career » for all civil servants by securing access to promotion all their professional life long.