General Secretariat for Administration (SGA)
The active military personnel is made up of contract military personnel and regular military personnel, predominantly the former (64.0%). The percentage of female personnel is 15.0%.
The armed forces make specific and intense demands on their personnel, male and female. Military operations are still the most physically and mentally demanding of the challenges which they must face. In the current environment, the armed forces may be called upon to respond to a broad range of tense situations, emergencies and conflicts, either at home or abroad. Military personnel must therefore be prepared at all times to be deployed far from home, often at short notice, unexpectedly and for an unknown length of time. They accomplish their duties in situations that are liable to extreme changes from one operation to the next: operations conducted by joint, allied or multinational forces, under the supervision of the UN, the European Union or Nato, depending on France’s bilateral commitments or the need to protect French nationals. The general military regulations set out five fundamental principles – “the spirit of sacrifice, including the ultimate sacrifice, discipline, availability, loyalty and neutrality”, commitment to which is an unquestionable prerequisite for successful operations.
The constraints imposed by the state and military service are, speaking objectively, considerable. As a result, military personnel receive various and specific forms of compensation depending on the severity of the constraints actually supported and on the individual situation (bonuses and special allowances, personalised aid for the families of personnel deployed on overseas operations, for the spouse’s employment, childcare or purchasing a house, etc.).
With increasing professionalisation of the armed forces, the Ministry of Defence must be able to recruit – it is one of the major State recruiters, taking on an average 20,000 military personnel every year – train and secure employee loyalty. It does this mainly by offering attractive and rewarding professional careers, followed by opportunities for military personal to retrain. Managing military human resources, aimed at providing the military personnel required to fulfil the armed forces’ operational contracts, must satisfy two requirements essential for any professional army :
>>youth, implying steady HR turnover. To this end, all new recruits are taken on under contract and some professional careers are offered for limited periods. Similarly, age limits and length of service are still, by statute, lower than in the civil sector, although they were raised in 2005 ;
>> posts conform to a pyramid structure, the result of a hierarchical organisation, enabling varied career paths. Thus, access to higher ranks is not dependent on length of service but on the acquisition of skills throughout one’s career, which may be formalised by a qualification or certificate, and the potential to take responsibility at a high level.
To meet these requirements, military HRM has developed special retraining and pension systems, essential to manage high HR flow. Military personnel are thus given the means to have their services and experience recognised with a view to re-entering the civil labour market, as is inevitable given the brevity of a military career. The pension scheme has been developed to be as efficient and flexible as possible, and has also been designed in line with the need to manage HR flow and meet operational priorities.
Civilian HRM comes within the general framework of France’s civilian public service. It is changing in line with the public service agreement for 2012 defined by the French President and with the guidelines set out in the White Paper on the future of the public administration.
Ministry of Defence civil personnel consists of civil servants (51.7%), contract workers (12.3%) and public sector workers (36.0%). Their work mainly involves general administration and support tasks, for which they have the initial training and qualifications required. They thus play an essential role in the smooth running of both the Ministry and the armed forces.
While the status of civilian personnel means that they are not under the same obligations as their military colleagues, it is crucial that they are well-integrated in the units and teams at Defence bases in order to support the operational military personnel. Their permanent presence provides continuity of service to units whose schedules are often disrupted due to operational requirements.
Civilian personnel may, on a voluntary basis, take part in operations overseas, as reservists, i.e. with the status of military personnel. The Ministry of Defence is examining the possibility of deploying them overseas under civilian status, to perform support work vital to the accomplishment of the armed forces’ operations.
Rights : Mindef/SGA