GEPP is often described as a comprehensive map of jobs and skills.
That's exactly how it sometimes ends up in a file that no one opens again six months later.
A useful approach starts with another question: What jobs and skills will the company need in the future, and how can we begin shaping employees’ career paths today?
For companies subject to the mandatory negotiation requirement, as well as those that voluntarily participate in the process, the challenge is therefore less about producing a perfect set of guidelines than about creating a framework that is simple enough to remain viable.
GEPP stands for Job and Career Path Management.
This is a forward-looking approach that compares the company’s foreseeable developments with its existing jobs, workforce, and skills.
Specifically, it seeks to answer very practical questions:
GEPP is therefore not just about forecasting staffing levels. It links corporate strategy, collective skills, and individual career paths.
The two terms are often presented as the old and new names for the same approach. In practice, this interpretation is useful but somewhat oversimplified.
| Criterion | GPEC | GEPP |
| Meaning | Strategic Workforce and Skills Planning | Job and Career Path Management |
| Focal Length | Jobs and Skills | Jobs, Skills, and Career Paths |
| Logic | Anticipating collective needs | Better align collective needs with career paths |
| In the Labor Code | The term is still used, particularly within various industries | The term refers to collective bargaining at the company level |
| In practice | Still widely used | Preferred term for the corporate approach |
The Labor Code clearly illustrates this coexistence: Article L2242-20 establishes a framework at the company level for negotiations on the management of jobs and career paths, while also providing for the implementation of a system for the forward-looking management of jobs and skills.¹
With regard to occupational sectors, Article L2241-12 still explicitly uses the term GPEC.²
The real shift lies primarily in the focus: we no longer think solely in terms of the skill set the company will need, but also in terms of how people can develop to acquire those skills.
Article L2242-20 of the Labor Code provides for negotiations every three years in:
The text stipulates that negotiations shall focus, in particular, on strategic workforce planning, related support measures, the broad guidelines for vocational training over a three-year period, certain prospects for the use of various employment contracts, and the career progression of employees who hold union leadership positions.¹
An important clarification: The law requires that negotiations be initiated, but not necessarily that a GEPP agreement be reached. For an SME or mid-sized company below the legal threshold, there is obviously nothing preventing it from voluntarily adopting a less rigorous approach.
GEPP directly affects changes in occupations, career mobility, training, and, in some cases, jobs that are likely to undergo significant transformation.
It would therefore be contradictory to develop it solely within an HR department. In companies subject to collective bargaining, the labor-management representatives are part of the process outlined in the Labor Code.
Beyond compliance, their input can also bring to light realities that are less visible in a central database: a job role whose responsibilities have already changed in practice, a new workload, a skill that has become essential, or a career pathway that is already functioning informally.
The issue is no longer simply a matter of replacing those who will retire.
In its 2025 Future of Jobs Report, the World Economic Forum reports that the employers surveyed anticipate that, on average, 39% of the skills currently used by workers will be transformed or become obsolete between 2025 and 2030.³
Of course, this global figure does not predict what will happen at every French company. It does, however, give an idea of how quickly certain standards can become irrelevant if they are never updated.
The Labor Code now provides for a career development interview focused, in particular, on the employee’s skills and qualifications, their development, changes within the company, training needs, and career advancement goals.
It is held every four years for employees who remain with the same company.⁴
This development brings individual performance reviews even closer to the GEPP approach: the aspirations expressed by employees should not be viewed in isolation from the future needs identified by the company.
October 1, 2026, is also a key deadline for currently valid collective agreements that address the frequency of performance reviews: they must incorporate the new framework set forth in Article L6315-1.⁴
This is yet another reason to ensure consistency between your GEPP approach and the tools used to manage your interview campaigns and career paths.
European Directive 2023/970 is based, in particular, on the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value, with objective and non-discriminatory pay criteria.
The deadline for its transposition by Member States was set for June 7, 2026.⁵
For HR, this underscores the importance of having jobs that are clearly defined, categorized, and comparable. A vague classification system makes it much more difficult to analyze compensation in a consistent manner.
A GEPP process can quickly become unwieldy. To remain practical, each step must produce an output that can be used by the next step.
Objective: To understand what will actually change.
Business expansion, automation, opening a new location, the green transition, and changes to the business model: future needs stem primarily from these transformations.
Deliverable: a few strategic scenarios and the populations potentially affected.
A common mistake is to start by mapping out 150 job roles before even knowing what you’re looking for. Without a clear direction, the GEPP becomes nothing more than an inventory.
Deliverable: An initial projection of critical jobs and skills over the next two to three years.
For each priority activity, ask yourself what needs to be strengthened, created, transformed, or gradually phased out.
The goal is not to predict the future organizational structure with precision. A projection that is reliable enough to inform decision-making is better than an extremely detailed scenario that will become obsolete with the next strategic change.
That's usually the hardest part.
Job profiles, job descriptions, skills, work experience, training completed, and information gathered from interviews provide insight into the available workforce.
Deliverable: a usable map of current jobs and skills.
The pitfall is striving for comprehensiveness. A matrix containing 250 competencies that is assessed once and then set aside is less useful than a more streamlined framework that is actually kept up to date.
This makes it possible to bridge the gap between our desired future and the current reality: We will need 20 people capable of accomplishing X.
12 already possess the skill. 5 could acquire it quickly. There is likely still a shortfall of 3 profiles. This is when GEPP really begins to produce a decision.
Each deviation may give rise to various courses of action:
The GEPP is therefore not the action plan itself. It helps determine which measures to implement, for which population, and within what timeframe.
The potential agreement translates the negotiations into principles, priorities, and procedures applicable within the company.
Depending on the context, it may specify, among other things, priority jobs or skills, training measures, mobility conditions, guidelines for the skills development plan, support mechanisms, and monitoring procedures.
The Labor Code also provides that an assessment must be conducted upon the agreement's expiration.¹
Avoid starting the diagnostic process once the first meeting has already been scheduled.
A more realistic reverse schedule involves preparing several months in advance:
This makes the discussion more substantive: participants discuss options and paths forward rather than simply reviewing tables on the day of the meeting.
A job description may be accurate on the day it is written but can quickly become outdated as the job evolves. Every interview, hiring process, or training session should contribute to a gradual expansion of our understanding of the required skills.
Without a mechanism for updating it, the map quickly loses its value.
A GEPP based solely on the organizational chart and strategy overlooks one essential factor: what people actually want and are capable of doing.
Two employees with similar skill sets do not necessarily have the same career development plans.
A manager identifies a need during a meeting. The need is noted in the meeting minutes. Three months later, the training plan is developed in a separate file.
The problem isn't a lack of data. It's the lack of continuity between processes.
The more roles, levels, sub-skills, and criteria a framework includes, the higher its maintenance costs become.
Good mapping isn't necessarily the most detailed. It's the kind that the organization can actually keep up to date.
If there is no data to indicate whether the gaps are narrowing, GEPP becomes invisible.
Management must therefore begin as soon as the initiative is being designed.
A company with 150 employees does not need to replicate the structure of a corporation with 20,000 employees.
She can start with three questions:
1. Which jobs will be critical over the next three years?
Identify the positions where a shortage of staff, the departure of a current employee, or a job redesign would truly jeopardize business operations.
2. Do we have internal solutions?
For these positions only, review the available skills, potential successors, and employees’ mobility preferences.
3. What is the action plan for priority gaps?
Training, recruitment, knowledge transfer, or mobility. It’s an 80/20 approach: it’s better to focus seriously on about ten truly strategic jobs than to map out the entire company without the capacity to sustain it.
An HRIS becomes truly useful when the methodology is defined and the company knows which data points it needs to link.
An HRIS software can, among other things, help bring together:
It is this continuity that matters. A skills inventory that exists in isolation in a spreadsheet remains merely a snapshot. When linked to interviews and training, it can become a decision-making tool.
If you're still in the technology scoping phase, our guide to choosing an HRIS and our overview of HR tools can also help you define your needs before comparing solutions.
There's no point in creating thirty KPIs if no one uses them.
| Indicator | What it lets you track | Approximate frequency |
| Coverage of Critical Competencies | Ability to meet priority needs | Quarterly |
| Internal Mobility Rate | Percentage of needs met through internal changes | Quarterly / Annual |
| Conducting Interviews | Quality of the feedback on aspirations and needs | Depending on the campaign |
| Training Needs Addressed | Moving from Diagnosis to Action | Semiannual |
| Critical positions with no identified internal solution | Vulnerability Level | Quarterly |
| Changes in Targeted Skills | Actual Impact of Development Initiatives | Semiannual / Annual |
The most useful metric depends on the issue at hand. If the main concern is ten retirements in a technical field, the number of successors who have been prepared will provide much more insight than an overall internal mobility rate.
GEPP, or employment and career path management, aims to anticipate changes in jobs and skills and to organize the necessary actions to adapt resources and support career paths.
The two concepts are closely related. In the current Labor Code, negotiations at the company level focus on the management of jobs and career paths, while the term GPEC continues to be used primarily for negotiations at the industry level.¹,²
Negotiations on the GEPP are mandatory in accordance with the frequency specified by the Labor Code in the relevant companies and groups, particularly those with 300 or more employees. Below this threshold, a GEPP process may be implemented on a voluntary basis.¹
In the absence of applicable standard provisions, Article L2242-20 provides for negotiations every three years for the companies concerned.¹
A simple approach involves starting with the strategy, projecting future needs, mapping current resources, analyzing the gaps, and then developing an action plan that combines training, job rotation, recruitment, and retraining.
The HR department often leads the process, but business units, managers, employees, and employee representatives provide different and complementary insights. A top-down GEPP approach risks overlooking on-the-ground realities and professional aspirations.
The choice depends on the scope. An HRIS becomes particularly useful when it allows you to link competency frameworks, performance reviews, career paths, training, and metrics, rather than managing each piece of information in a separate tool. A good talent management system does not seek to predict the organization’s structure five years from now down to the individual employee. Above all, it allows you to identify gaps early on that warrant a decision and then verify whether the actions taken actually reduce them.
Do you want to better align skills, performance reviews, and employee development?
1. Labor Code, Article L2242-20, Légifrance. The article specifies the companies involved, the three-year frequency, and the content of negotiations regarding the management of jobs and career paths.
View Article L2242-20 on Légifrance
2. Labor Code, Article L2241-12, Légifrance. The text pertaining to professional sectors consistently uses the term “forward-looking management of jobs and skills” and provides for negotiations on this subject at least once every three years.
View Article L2241-12 on Légifrance
3. World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs Report 2025, January 7, 2025. International survey of more than 1,000 employers representing more than 14 million workers; source of the 39% figure regarding expected changes in skills by 2030.
View the Future of Jobs Report 2025
4. Labor Code, Article L6315-1, Légifrance. Current text regarding career path reviews, their frequency, their content, and the transitional provisions applicable to collective agreements in effect as of October 1, 2026.
View Article L6315-1 on Légifrance
5. European Parliament and Council of the European Union, Directive (EU) 2023/970 of May 10, 2023, on pay transparency. The text sets out, in particular, the criteria for pay and the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value.
View Directive (EU) 2023/970 on EUR-Lex
