The CPF victim of its own success
In an information report, the Senate Social Affairs Committeepoints to the “growth crisis” of France Skills, the organization that manages the personal training account (CPF). Between 2020 and 2021, the number of training courses financed by the CPF increased from 1 to 2 million.
” The use of the CPF has been stimulated by its disintermediation, the provision of accounts in euros rather than in hours and the simplification of the eligibility of training courses”, the authors point out. Clearly, it is you, employees, who decide on your own to spend the credit on your CPF on training, as planned by its creators.
The “bad” CPF used?
This is where the shoe pinches.
The use of the CPF appears less and less focused on training that meets the skills needs of companies.
Senate report on the CPF
Designed and launched to develop the employability of employees throughout their professional life, according to the authors, the CPF would therefore not really fulfill its primary purpose. This would weigh on the accounts of France Skills.
“Thus, the most requested trainings in 2020 were trainings in living languages and foreign civilizationsthe driving license preparation and training actions intended for business creators and takeovers, which often have a weak link with entrepreneurship. A small minority of training courses aim to obtain a certification listed in the national directory of professional certifications (RNCP)”, specifies the information report.
The CPF is now free
Currently, you want to mobilize your CPF to follow a training course, it’s simple and even almost free.
You connect to your personal training account, you select the targeted training, and you pay with your credit balance. A sum that you have in fact capitalized each year by working.
If the balance credited to your CPF is sufficient to cover the training costs, the latter is in fact free for you.
If the balance credited to your CPF is not enough to cover the training costs, several options are possible:
- Either your employer contributes this sum within a framework governed by a collective agreement. So still free for you.
- Either your OPCO gets its hands on the wallet and finances the balance to be paid. So still free for you
- Either you pay the balance with your personal funds.
Will the CPF become payable tomorrow?
The Senate’s Social Affairs Committee proposes, among other things, some mechanisms for regulating the CPF “which would allow both to better control its management and to refocus it on the issues of employability and professional careers”.
In order to make the beneficiaries more responsible and to raise the interest of the training covered, the rapporteurs recommend introducing a remainder to be paid by the user of the CPF, even modest, in the event of training not leading to a certification registered in the RNCP
Senate report on the CPF
This could, for example, concern highly requested training such as preparation for a driving license or training in foreign languages. In short, you could find yourself actually paying for part of your training if it did not meet the expectations of the legislator.
How much would this remainder be? For the moment, no sum has been advanced. And the unions of employees, nor the employers risk to quantify the subject. Moreover, for them, the file is not even yet in the “package” of the negotiations.
In their report, the senators specify all the same that this famous remaining charge for employees, could be abolished in certain specific circumstances. For example if your employer co-finances your training project under the CPF or if you have your training project validated as part of a professional development council (CEP).
For now, nothing is settled.
The social partners have not yet taken up the subject. If such recommendations were adopted in the future, and depending on the amount of the remainder to be paid, this would amount to slowing down employees in their recourse to the CPF. However, paying for training was not in the CPF’s initial contract.