"Defis" employee training survey
Who are the employees who undertake training?
How do they obtain training?
What use do they make of it?
What effects does their training have on their careers, their external mobility and their chances of getting a new job?
The training and employee trajectory surveys (dispositif d'enquêtes sur les formations et itinéraires des salariés / Defis), initiated by the CNEFP (Conseil National d'Evaluations de la Formation Professionnelle/National Council for the Evaluation of Vocational Training) and financed by France compétences, are carried out by Céreq and managed jointly by Céreq and France compétences.
Methodology: The surveys are carried out in two stages.
1/ The companies strand: a survey of 4,500 companies that are representative of private companies with three of more employees in all sectors of the economy (excluding agriculture), carried out in December 2015. The aim of this strand is to gather detailed information on the context in which employees undertake training (or do not undertake training).
2/ The employees strand: a panel of 16,00 individuals, who in December 2013 were employees of one of the responding companies in the company strand, regardless of the nature of their employment contract, are being tracked over a five-year period. The five waves of the surveys, from the autumn of 2015 to the autumn of 2019, will make it possible to identify all the training undertaken and all the changes that take place in their career trajectories over the course of the five years.
Survey objectives:
To investigate the dynamics of employee training in all their diversity...
in conjunction with their work and the organisation thereof,
in conjunction with the companies' training and human resources policies,
...and its effects:
on employees' careers and their earnings trajectories,
on external mobility and the chances of getting a new job,
as well as on other changes in employees' work-related activity.
The innovations of the Defis surveys:
They combine a joint employer-employee survey with the longitudinal tracking of a cohort of employees over five years:
- they reflect the way in which training is rooted in both work tasks and jobs,
- they extend identification of the continuing vocational training undertaken to all the various forms of learning,
- they form a basis for analysing the links between training and all the changes that have taken place in the activity in question,
- the survey includes very small enterprises and their employees.
Some avenues for analysis:
- What are the benefits for individual employees and their careers? What roles do company policies play in securing trajectories?
- Does training, as a medium-term investment, have delayed effects on employees' trajectories? Does work itself constitute a training opportunity?
- Can the opportunities for professional development be reduced to access to organised training alone?
- Are inequalities of access to training compensated for or, conversely, do they simply pile up alongside inequalities in workplace learning?
- What are the specific characteristics of employees in very small enterprises with regard to their participation in training?
- Is there a substitution effect between organised training and on-the-job training in small enterprises?
An official statistical survey : The Defis surveys have been awarded the public interest and statistical quality certificate issued by the National Council for Statistical Information (CNIS), part of INSEE, the French official statistical service. This makes it compulsory to respond to the survey questionnaire.
Contact: Isabelle MARION-VERNOUX, Head of the Training and Certification Department.
