Many imagine France as a country with never-ending vacations and long leisurely lunches. Yet while there is a grain of truth in this, the reality is that the French workplace has been simmering with pent-up pressure since long before the 2008 crisis, reports The Guardian.
A recent study by the Paris-based consulting firm Technologia has found that more than three million French workers are at a high risk of burnout. Tales of work-related suicides in the French media over the past eight years seem to support these statistics.
Two of the perhaps most high-profile cases involved France Telecom (rebranded Orange in 2013) and Renault. The former's CEO, Didier Lombard, and two top executives resigned in early 2010 following 35 suicides in 2008 and 2009. They were subsequently indicted in May 2012, along with the company itself, under criminal law for workplace bullying. The case is still before the courts.
At the same time, a French court of appeals found car maker Renault guilty of gross negligence in May 2012 with regard to three suicides in 2006 and 2007.
Both of these events are a first in France, with potentially wide-ranging consequences. "France Telecom and its top executives being in criminal proceedings, sends a strong message to the business community," says Loïc Lerouge, a researcher and leading specialist in psychosocial risks at the Université Montesquieu-Bordeaux IV.
More recently, in January, the suicide of an Orange employee on the Paris metro reinforced the debate with the CGT, France's second largest union confederation, claiming that it could be linked to the pressures of work. A statement from Orange said that the worker had seemed to be experiencing difficulties for the last few months and that a meeting had been arranged to propose professional support measures.
Nicolas Barrier, the HR Director of Renault's massive R&D site Technocentre, where the suicides took place, details how Renault has been busy revamping the way it manages its staff in France in the past six years.
"Starting in 2007, Carlos Ghosn decided to put in place a management team at the centre, which employs over 10,000 people," Mr. Barrier explains, under the watchful eye of a PR rep. "We decided to create a plan to improve the working conditions of our teams. It's based on three things: bringing management closer to employees and training managers to know about psychosocial risks, regulating workload and ensuring adequate resources to get the job done, and creating warning and alert mechanisms for at-risk people."
Jean-Claude Délgènes, the founder and CEO of Technologia, which specialises in preventing work-related psychosocial risks, has dealt with no fewer than 73 work-related suicides since 2008. Despite these alarming figures, he feels that a lot of companies have improved risk prevention in the past few years.
The key to understanding the French – and in fact European – legal context is a 1989 occupational health and safety directive, which requires EU member states to encourage improvements in, and safeguard, the safety and health of workers.
In France, two events in the early 2000s drastically altered this emphasis on precautionary measures. The first was a landmark decision in an asbestos case made by one of France's highest courts, la Cour de Cassation, in 2002, shifting the burden of proof from people to companies in cases involving work-related illnesses.
The second was a decree issued by the government following the massive explosion of the AZF chemical factory in September 2001 (which resulted in 29 deaths), requiring companies to evaluate all possible occupational risks and detail them in one sole document.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.