A Human Resources Structure in Deficit

The General Public Policy Review (Révision générale des politiques publiques—RGPP), and the ensuing reform of the French Armed Forces, led to a drastic reduction in personnel, particularly in the French Air and Space Force (Armée de l’Air et de l’Espace—AAE), which was scaled down by 30 per cent between 2008 and 2015. Significant efforts were expended to meet this target, in terms of reorganisation, rationalisation, and outsourcing certain functions. There was a 30 per cent reduction in air base security and protection personnel, aeronautical maintenance lost 4,000 from 18,000 posts, and human resources (HR) management suffered a 40 per cent cut. Additionally, several air bases were closed, and headquarters staffs substantially reorganised. These efforts obviously put us in a difficult position, and it is now imperative to restore an eroded structure, undermined by years of cutbacks.

Since 2016 the AAE Human Resources Directorate has been working on rebuilding its manpower in order to support the modernisation of the AAE’s capabilities, and to enable it to carry out its operational missions, within an increasingly tense international security environment.

Thirty years of political decisions have resulted in the distorted HR structure we are faced with today. The cohorts recruited in vast numbers after the 9/11 attacks are now reaching their first pension entitlement, and may therefore leave at any time. The structure also suffers from shortages in middle management, owing to the low level of recruiting during the RGPP years, yet it must now manage surges of new recruits. This situation has resulted in an increase in unwanted departures. The worst hit specialisations are aircrew, operational aeronautical maintenance, flight control and C2I.

In 2022, the civil aviation industry announced that it was seeking to recruit 15,000 specialists. This year, Airbus is calling for 13,000 recruits across its sites. An enticing and predatory private sector is thus competing for the specialist skillset required in our planned expansion. We must improve our attractiveness as a matter of necessity. As the President of the Republic said in his New Year’s address to the forces in Mont-de-Marsan on 20 January 2023, retention must be made an absolute priority. We must also permanently adapt our training procedures in line with changes in capacity and societal expectations.

Boosting our Appeal

Recruitment is fed by appeal. It is a seed which requires constant nourishment, and suffers from periods of drought and frost - Human Resources abhor instability. Appeal is created step by step, through information campaigns targeting specific audiences, applying appropriate communication and marketing techniques. It is brought about through dynamic, appealing branding of the employer, and by airmen who are the ambassadors of their profession. The Air and Space Force’s allure is also boosted by its operational successes, as is the positive image conveyed by state-of-the-art aeronautical exports.

A wide-ranging incentive plan, instigated in 2015, has enabled us to triple annual recruitment. The Air and Space Force’s target is to recruit close to 3,800 young people in 2023. To achieve this, we have strengthened, regionalised and professionalised our recruitment drive. Our strategy has evolved to incorporate new methods, which include increased social media presence to access a pool of today’s and tomorrow’s youth. In 2022, 65 per cent of applications were submitted online, and 30 percent of the users on the French Air and Space Force’s recruitment website, Devenir Aviateur (Become an airman), were online between midnight and 6 am. This has prompted us to rethink our recruiting process. Our wish to involve all airmen in this essential recruitment drive was also bolstered in an internal communication campaign coined All Airmen are recruiters (Aviateurs, tous recruteurs).

I must not leave out our ‘ambassador airmen’. Around a hundred volunteers, coordinated via a specialised platform, advise pupils and students on their trades within the Air and Space Force. These personnel contribute to the success of our recruitment and to the noble task of informing our youth.

We must further intensify and optimise our online presence in the future, by streamlining our procedures, consolidating our marketing approach in all areas and ensuring we observe and adapt to societal changes.

Retention of our Workforce

The main challenge however, is retention. It calls for a holistic approach since the underlying issues are often intangible, and stem from emotions or feelings.

The Air and Space Force is addressing retention along to 5 lines:

• A rewarding level of pay: branch-specific retention bonuses have been created, which take into account service needs and retirement rates. This will also be achieved through a new military pay policy, which reaffirms the distinctive nature of military life, with better consideration of our community’s constraints and obligations. By adapting the compensation structure to current societal expectations and simplifying an opaque system, military salaries are made fairer and more attractive.

• Dynamic career paths, favouring internal promotion. This is a trademark of our institution, in which a Corporal can end up a General.⁽¹⁾ In this way in 2021, we doubled the number of junior-ranked airmen and women who became NCOs.

• Modernised, success-based training, which awards officially recognised competences. Digitisation plays a central role, as in the SmartSchool project, launched in 2017. This enables us to adapt to the needs of new generations, whilst optimising effectiveness and training time. Furthermore, the Air and Space Force aims to raise every airman to a higher level than that held on entry into the service, by offering professional certificates and diplomas. For instance, the NCO Training School in Rochefort has been approved to teach and to administer aeronautical technician certification exams.

• Personalised competence management, conducted through open dialogue. HR decisions, especially when unfavourable, can no longer be made behind closed doors. Here too, digitisation contributes to transparency, and ease of communication between managers and their staff.

• Lastly, an improved living and working environment. An ambitious policy regarding personnel conditions will benefit from dedicated budgets, under the control of each local commander.

Salary, career opportunities, training, dialogue with hierarchy and managers and working conditions: aside from these crucial elements, perhaps the most important criterion lies in the day-to-day relationships which bind our airmen within their units.

First of all, in the fraternal relationship between airmen, whether we call it cohesion, team spirit, a sense of togetherness or esprit de corps. This relationship is forged from the very start, in our basic training schools, where airmen are required to push their limits and create a team spirit. Recruits start thinking ‘we’ rather than ‘I’: this is paramount in the success of any mission. This spirit must live on, on our airbases, through preparative activities which demand mutual help and cohesion, right through to operational deployment. Naturally, the tougher the situation, the stronger the bond. We must therefore begin to foster it in peacetime, where the line between competition, challenge and confrontation, is fine. In his memoirs, Pilote de guerre (Flight to Arras, in the English edition), Saint-Exupéry wrote: Each is responsible for all, each is alone responsible, each is alone responsible for all. Our bond of cohesion could not have been better summarised.

Second is the relationship between commander and subordinate. The commander is a vital focal point for personnel retention through his or her leadership style and the way in which it is exercised: by sharing the broader strategy along with the aim of mission at hand; by listening to, and getting to know, each of the subordinates and recognising the roles and tasks of each of them; by encouraging their work, and by making each responsible through delegation; by flexibility in work organisation, and assigning a variety of duties; and in the physical environment and material conditions commanders provide for their personnel, especially in terms of infrastructure.

The ability to command is not innate. General de Gaulle said that commanding is the culmination of a long-term endeavour: this is why the Air and Space Force invests in its officer training, and adapts to our society’s evolutions, while preserving the fundamentals of the profession of arms: courage, hardiness, resilience, daring and agility.

Adapting, Modernising and Optimising our Training

The training we provide guarantees the level of excellence demonstrated by the Air and Space Force in its missions. The expertise required to organise the maintenance in operational condition of increasingly complex weapon systems is ever more demanding. As new fields of conflict and new capabilities emerge, we must constantly adapt and develop our skills. We must train our airmen to be agile, ready to face up to the strategic, technological, technical and human challenges that are certain to appear in the future.

The Air and Space Force’s training procedures are part of a transformational process based on digital innovation and on-the-job training. Technology enables us to adapt to both internal and external constraints, and allows us to improve the effectiveness of our training, through optimised teaching methods to meet the younger generation’s expectations. By fostering apprenticeships, we can set our teaching into better context and at the same time alleviate pressure on our schools, reduce training time and satisfy our young recruits’ eagerness to get hands-on experience of their future occupation.

We will strive to improve our training process, by designing relevant and interactive distance learning courses, accompanied by individual support when needed. These sessions will be combined with modern and effective face-to-face sessions in our schools and within the forces. They will enable us to perform better, train faster and in line with demand, and retain our spirit of achievement throughout our airmen’s careers.

Human Resources are at the heart of contemporary defence challenges. We will need to modernise our capabilities to keep the upper hand and not fall behind on technological advancements. Yet behind every state-of-the-art device is an airman who needs recruiting, training, conditioning, and retaining. As recent events have shown, humans still have a relevant role in existential combat. We must continue to invest in the people who are, and will remain, the vital link in our forces’ achievements. The qualities and loyalty of tomorrow’s service personnel are being forged today. ♦

(1) I exemplify this perfectly: I was a Corporal in December 1982, and became a Lieutenant General in September 2020.