Nearly a year after its adoption, the four-day week has won over Écully’s civil servants

REPORTAGE – Since January 2024, territorial agents at Écully town hall have had the choice of working 4 or 4.5 days a week. A measure widely adopted and pushed by the LR mayor, Sébastien Michel, but not accompanied by a reduction in working hours.

Le Figaro Lyon

Four days, four and a half days or five days of work. For almost a year now, in Écully, a commune of 18,300 inhabitants located in the west of Lyon, territorial civil servants have the choice. A new work organization proposed by the commune’s mayor, Sébastien Michel (LR), for reasons as personal as they are political. “For me, we don’t work enough in our country. However, just offering blood and tears doesn’t work. You can’t be competitive and attractive by only offering a life of suffering.”explains the Les Républicains elected representative to the Figaro.

Fewer women working part-time

Having personally experienced the four-fifths system when he was an executive in a pharmaceutical laboratory, and after several discussions with Laurent de la Clergerie (head of the Lyon-based company LDCL, which introduced the four-day, 32-hour working week), Sébastien Michel came up with the idea of offering these new rhythms to employees in his commune, in departments where this was possible and on a voluntary basis. A round-table discussion then began with the trade unions. “We finally decided on 37h40 over five or 4.5 days. (with the possibility of alternating between a four-day week and a five-day week, NDLR) and 36h10 over four days (with fewer days off, Editor’s note)says Christophe Certin, the municipality’s HR director. “The only condition was not to reduce the quality of service and the opening hours to the public”.adds Sébastien Michel.

Élise Vinceneux, in charge of the early childhood service, has chosen to switch to a four-day week and to have her Friday to herself. “I was working 80% before, so in fact I was already working a four-day week. But now I’m full-time. So yes, it makes for longer days, but it also allows me to go a bit further in my files.”she explains. In fact, almost all of the commune’s 80% employees were women. Many of them can now work at 100%. “I was particularly shocked by this fact. It’s the other positive effect of this new organization”.says the mayor of Écully with satisfaction.

Looking after the kids on Wednesdays, having time to yourself on Fridays to extend your weekend… everyone has their own reasons for adapting their work schedule. Béatrice Moreau, head of the communications department, has opted to work 4.5 days to be able to devote herself to a job as an editorial secretary for a university magazine. “I was working 80% to be able to do this until now, but I was doing a lot of overtime. Now I can reconcile the two”.she assures us.

A rhythm to find

This new organization does entail a few constraints. “As an employer we realize that it quickly touches on many personal issues for agents. For example: “If I finish later, is the extra cost of after-school care bearable?”, etc.”says Christophe Certin. As for the staff, they have also had to adapt to longer working days. “There’s a little less flexibility in the day-to-day, we can’t leave early for school meetings, for example.”says Élise Vinceneux.

To date, only one person has decided to go back for reasons of personal organization. “In reality, this measure is really simple to implement. The only difficult thing is defining which service is eligible and which is not.”continues the HR Director. Not necessarily expected, this new organization has facilitated recruitment by the municipality. “Four years ago, at the start of my term of office, I was struck by the lack of appeal of civil service jobs. Now, candidates talk to us about the four-day week when recruiting. It’s a real plus”.says a delighted Sébastien Michel.

A mayor who hopes his measure will catch on on the right : “People on the right aren’t comfortable with this, because in their culture, which is permanently marked by the 35-hour week, they have the impression that talking about the organization of work means telling people to work less, which isn’t the case in Écully. I believe, on the contrary, that we need to modernize on these subjects.”

In the corridors of Écully town hall, the general consensus is that these new rhythms are very appealing. Begun in January 2024, the experiment has been adopted by 50% of the town’s 250-plus employees. The small town in western Lyon is no longer the only local authority to have adopted the four-day week. Since last September, the Lyon metropolitan area, with its 5500 employees, has also adopted similar rhythms..

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