The personal services sector must take up a major challenge: the aging of the population. How is he preparing for it? Guillaume Richard, CEO and founder of the group Yes Care, sheds light on the subject. Its group has 16 brands, including O2, France Presence, Silver Alliance or Nanny Expert and brings together more than 20,000 employees and 130,000 customers.
Franceinfo: Will you be able to meet the challenge of aging the population?
Guillaume Richard : Indeed, you are right, it is a major challenge with 92% of French people who wish to age at home and who wish to continue to be able to write the thread of their lives in their home, where they have lived all their lives and where they have their loved ones. And so for that, we need to recruit, to train collaborators who will be able to support these people at home and who will allow them to continue to write the thread of their lives and continue to live where they want to live and the way they want to live. Because leaving in Ehpad when you are an elderly person is a tearing. We take you away from home and you have to go to a place where you are imposed on you, you are imposed on you a way of living, we take away from where you have always lived. This is why most French people want to continue aging at home. And we are here to allow them.
One of the challenges of the personal services sector is the attractiveness of these trades, wages for example. How will you compensate your employees?
It is not necessarily attractiveness because we are extremely attractive. Last year, our group received 800,000 applications. If I remove the duplicates, it is 400,000 unique candidates for the group.
“400,000 candidates are 2% of all French people working in the private sector. So it’s huge. And in recruitment, on the other hand, we have recruitment difficulties.”
Guillaume Richardon franceinfo
Why do we have recruitment difficulties when there are many people who apply? Because there are a lot of people who say they like the elderly, I like children, I like to take care of my interior, clean up with me ‘. Ok, you may have that, but behind it takes real professional skills.
How many people do you recruit?
We try to recruit 7,000 to 8,000 people, but in fact, each year, we are missing 1,000 to 1,500 people. Because you give us what you have most precious. And so we must need to have people who are real pros.
Are these recruitments made on full times, on permanent contracts?
That’s everything. It is only the CDI almost here, but depending on the brands, we have brands that only recruit in full time. For example, the Lavandières company is just full time. O2, we accept people who are full time or part-time, but we promote full time and we mainly promote multi-activity. And most of our brands, in fact, adapt to what our employees want, which is more complicated for us. They are also formed a lot, because you once, you tell us what you are more precious. Your interior is the keys to your privacy, your elderly parents, your children. So we must have people who are perfectly capable of being as efficient as possible, as close as possible.
-What about wages?
In our profession, we have a constraint on wages. You can find it not normal for a Kylian Mbappé to earn 80 million euros. But all, we agree to pay sports channels, equipment, etc., which allow us to pay 80 million euros per year. And conversely, our consumer behavior means that we do not accept paying more than thirty euros an hour for a life assistant who will take care of our elderly parents, for an hour of child care, or an hour of service for the house. And so behind us, the constraint is that we cannot pay much more than the minimum wage, so it’s around the minimum wage.
Do you think customers would not follow?
We have tested lots of times, we have lots of modules, we have lots of different levels of services that allow the most professional employees more to value. And we also have different brands. We have a brand in Paris which is for customers who are ready to pay very dear for very exclusive services. And there, we are able to pay our employees much more. But it’s really a niche. Most of our customers do not want to pay more.
The government is looking for how to reduce the deficit in public finances. He wants to review in particular the tax niches. The tax credit for the employment of a home employee costs nearly seven billion euros. Do you fear that we touch it?
I am not afraid that we touch it, at least not that it is fundamentally questioned. Because even if it “costs” seven billion euros, it brings in almost ten.
And it seems not to be in the viewfinder of the Minister of Public Accounts.
No because in fact, both it is economically relevant, it reports more than it costs, but above all it is socially hyperutile.
“There are 12 million French families who benefit from the employment tax credit of an employee at home. Behind, three million jobs are and are declared jobs.”
Guillaume Richardon franceinfo
While if there is not this system, people are not declared. We are the leader in Spain by making 20 million euros in turnover on this activity, because the entire sector in Spain, it is barely a hundred million. In France, on the household, it is 9 billion and therefore we can see the impact of the declaration. It is that it allows to have people, our employees who are declared, who have social rights, who have rights when they retire, unemployment rights, if they are on maternity, illness, etc. They have real rights, they have possibilities for evolution, career possibilities, they are declared, they have the opportunity to rent an apartment, to take a loan too. This is above all a social system and therefore it is socially relevant, economically and positive interesting for the whole of society. This is why it is a system that was put in place by the left, contributed and consolidated by the right. There may be parametric adjustments, but no fundamental questioning.
