GEPP and the skills development plan: how to link them

GEPP says where the company needs to go in terms of skills. The skills development plan says how it gets there, concretely, each year. One is strategic and multi-year, the other is operational and annual. When the two are disconnected, an extremely common symptom, the company negotiates a GEPP that remains dead letter and funds a training plan that serves no trajectory. Linking them means making the skills development plan GEPP's execution vehicle.

What each system covers

GEPP operates on a three-year horizon, is part of collective bargaining, and defines orientations: which jobs are evolving, which skills are becoming critical, which trajectories to organize.

The skills development plan is annual, falls under the employer's decision after consulting the CSE, and lists the training actions actually undertaken, with their budgets and beneficiaries.

The first sets the course. The second moves forward. If the second does not move in the direction of the first, the company goes in circles with a training budget spent and no strategic skills acquired.

The symptom of disconnection

It is easy to spot. Take the GEPP agreement, take the year's training plan, and ask what share of the budget serves the priorities identified in the agreement. In many companies, the answer is embarrassing: the plan consists of mandatory regulatory training, individual requests, and historical renewals, with no connection to the negotiated orientations.

This is not ill will. It is a chain defect: no one organized the transition from one to the other.

The logical chain to build

Mapping. What we hold, what we will need.

Gaps. The difference between the two, job by job, skill by skill.

Priorities. Not all gaps are equal. Which are critical for strategy, which concern sensitive positions, which can wait.

Annual plan. The training actions that reduce priority gaps, with an allocated budget and identified beneficiaries.

Measurement. Did the gap shrink? If not, why.

Each missing link breaks the chain. The break almost always occurs between priorities and the annual plan.

Articulation with funding

The skills development plan mobilizes funding: the company's own budget, OPCO contributions and programs, co-financing. Financial engineering must follow GEPP's priorities, not the other way around. A company that builds its plan based on what is fundable, rather than on what it needs, lets funding dictate its skills strategy.

Measuring effects

Without indicators, the approach dies. Useful indicators measure the reduction of skills gaps, coverage of sensitive positions, internal mobility success rates, not just the number of training hours delivered, which says nothing about skills acquired.

FAQ

Is the skills development plan mandatory? Its formal creation falls under the employer's responsibility. The obligation to adapt employees to their position and maintain their employability, provided for by the labor code, constitutes its foundation.

Who decides the plan? The employer, after consulting the social and economic committee under the conditions provided by the labor code.

How to link the plan to professional interviews? The professional interview is the individual sensor of needs. It feeds the plan, provided its conclusions are actually reported and processed.

How to know if the plan serves GEPP? By measuring the share of the budget allocated to identified priorities and the effective reduction of skills gaps.

Check your obligations and funding with the training diagnostic: 10 minutes, an action plan based on the French Labour Code.