Second Week at School

The second week of classes it has been about how France´s law is for the employee security, the process that a company needs to do if they want to fire an employee.  All the legal process that has to be followed so an employee can get fire, how expensive it is, also it caught my attention de cooling periods for both parties.

How many hours they work a week 35, all the holidays they have 11, also all the benefits they can get if they get fire two years of their salary, if you run a small, medium or large company the process of selection for a position it is very important, because it may cost a lot of money if you don’t make the correct selection of the personal.

The disciplinary are divided on 4 degrees:

o   Unjustified absences, refusal to follow order,

o   Repetition of above

o   Theft, revealing trade secrets, violation of internal policy

o   Damage to property, downloading viruses, theft of intellectual property

Steve is a great teacher he is an American citizen that has live in France for the last twelve years, the class is very simple for his experience in the field of the Human Resources, always asking what other themes we might want to explorer. In France the Unions have great power and influence for the companies, that the companies don’t touch the employees that are representatives of the union, also a few weeks ago the train union went on a strike because the government wanted to change the laws for their contract agreement. They have many benefits also they can retire at age 55 because the labor they do, the new retirement age for France is 62. Steve shows us a graphic that fewer employees are in an Union, it has been going down since the WWII.

Also the structure in France for HR is very important for the company, I didn’t have an idea how the structure and all the positions for the big companies, it is cheaper for small companies to hire outsourcing to do all that job.

HR Structure in France

·         Strategic

·         Organization and Administration

·         Development

·         HR Consulting

Also I am impress by law every company no matter the size has to invest on training:

·         Companies legally required to spend money on training

·         Companies are legally to produce a training plan

·         In some cases, companies are legally requires to allow time off for employees´ professional development

But it is good in paper, but when you have so much money an agency decides what programs are needed, this could be miss handle because they might have favorites companies to do the training. After all, the laws are for the protection of the employee, but what about the companies, persons that decide to invest their money, some changes are needed to be made in the French law.

HR Class with Steve

In Geneve

Today it was the last day of the class, the case of reading anonymous cv´s was great, I never guessed that they were girls. Also the information how a person even if it is fired can fired back, it went to last instance and got 115k even if they had proof of the bad job she did.