The growth of pro contracts in commerce and distribution

There has been a marked increase in contracts for professionalization in recent years, with the contracts attractive to both employees and companies. For employees these type of contracts correspond to their primary needs, namely training, while companies are mostly on the lookout for qualified human resources staff.

 

A training focused on professionnalisation

Designed for those young people and adults aged between 16 and 25 who wish to acquire the fundamentals of a profession by having the possibility of applying those fundamentals directly in the workplace, the contract of professionalisation represents an excellent alternative for the employees in the future . Work-linked training is a guarantee of employability and efficiency, which explains the collective enthusiasm for this type of contract, particularly in the trade sector. To illustrate this point, Forco, a training organization (OPCA), has revealed that the food industry in this sector represents more than half of all alternance contracts signed since 2009, with 25,446 employees recruited as part of this professionalization in 2016 , compared with 14,745 recruited in 2009. Most of these companies are located in the Ile-de-France, Hauts-de-France or Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regions, and offer fixed-term contracts in more than 92% of cases.

 

Contracts with multiple benefits

Companies are one of the primary beneficiaries in proposing this type of contract, which is also accessible to jobseekers over 26 years of age who are registered at Pôle emploi and also unemployed job seekers who benefit from minimum social benefits (RSA) or who have benefited from other  social assistance benefits (ASS-specific solidarity allowance – or AAH-Allocation for adults with disabilities). In fact companies, in benefiting from the funding for continuous vocational training, have the possibility of hiring employees under a professionalization contract without this being an additional burden for the company, since employer expenses are non-existent. This advantage for companies is the principal reason why the 200,000th contract of this type was recently signed, primarily in companies working in the food or clothing trade.

 

As far as employees are concerned, many non-negligible advantages are offered to them by working within the framework of this type of contract. These advantages include the fact that the young people and adults involved in this type of training, which combines both academic and professional aspects, will obtain a diploma related to their qualifications reviewed and validated by the professional world at the end of their training. Better career prospects are thus offered to these employees who can be paid up to 80% of the minimum wage (SMIC), depending on their age and qualifications. Added to this is the fact that more than half of all businesses (51.5% to be precise) that have hosted young people with a professionalization contract  have offered these employees a job upon completion of their training. 19.1% of these job offers were for full time contracts, proof that these training contracts, covering a total of some 43 000 young people in 2015, represent a real opportunity both for the jobseeker and for the host companies.