A social balance sheet with little impact from the health crisis
In the end, the upheavals of 2020 had little impact on the social balance sheet, with data remaining stable overall. The reason for this? The company's public service mission has been unfailingly upheld. Bruno Fabre, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors, gives us a summary of this document, produced by the UM's departments and services, first and foremost the Human Resources Department.
monsitj - stock.adobe.com
"2020 was a very special year for everyone, yet the University's operations and our public service mission were maintained even during the most difficult moments of this health crisis," begins Bruno Fabre, Vice-Chairman of the UM Board of Directors. As if to confirm this observation, he once again scrolls through the 239 pages of the social report, which in the final analysis reveals great consistency in the figures.
The University's overall workforce remains stable at around 4,890 employees, equivalent to 80% of the University's operating budget. " Payroll is our primary resource, because the function of a university is to produce grey matter from grey matter", emphasizes Bruno Fabre. The breakdown of the wage bill by staff category also remains extremely stable compared with 2019, with 80.6% of permanent staff, including 57% of teacher-researchers and researchers, and around 17% of contract staff in all categories.
New staff
A new feature of the 2020 social report is the inclusion in the UM workforce of staff working for the CFA,INSPE and CSU. These structures will be managed by the COMUE until the new site policy is implemented on January1, 2020. For the first time, the social balance sheet also includes the approximately 3,000 hosted staff. Not paid by the UM but housed in its laboratories, " these personnel are the hallmark of the intense relations we maintain with research organizations," explains Bruno Fabre. It was therefore logical to include them.
Another new feature is the special mention of student contracts, which have seen a sharp increase from 628 in 2019 to 862 in 2020. "These jobs were created to support students at a distance as part of the Covid crisis " and in particular as part of the Connect telephone scheme, which has enabled thousands of first-year students to maintain a link with the University by being contacted by their peers.
A proactive policy
While budgets for social action and staff training were maintained throughout 2020, confinements and telecommuting sometimes led to the cancellation of training courses or the absence of certain agents. Actual training expenditure therefore fell from 224,719 euros in 2019 to 144,183 in 2020, a difference of 80,000 euros that will be reallocated in 2021, as the Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors explains: " We wanted to implement this proactive policy, not only by maintaining the budgets, but also by rolling over the remaining credits to 2021 ".
A proactive policy that goes well beyond this, since the University has also authorized all its structures (UFRs, schools, components, research units, etc.) to reallocate certain unused operating credits to investment. " We did not want to centralize unused credits to increase the University's financial reserves. We preferred to focus on the future, by encouraging investment in property renovation, teaching and scientific equipment, common services, etc.".
Continuity of public service
The main new feature of 2020 is, of course, teleworking, which has profoundly transformed the way we work, and to which the social report now devotes a section. However, as the 2020 figures are based on the call for applications launched in 2019, they do not yet reflect its massive entry into our daily lives. However, by 2019, 112 applications had been received, compared with 98 in 2018. " That's already a significant increase, but it's certain that these figures are still a long way from those we'll find in the balance sheets to come, " stresses the vice-president.
Teleworking is becoming increasingly popular, and access to it would not have been possible without the efforts made by the IT Systems and Digital Department throughout 2020. " We have to salute the work of this department. It' s largely thanks to them that we 've beenable to ensure the continuity of our mission and, in particular, maintain all our bodies." Boards of directors or academic councils, technical committees, health, safety and working conditions committees, meetings on operational subjects with the UFRs, schools and institutes, meetings with research unit directors, ... " Even in the midst of confinement, we have maintained real proximity with all our structures", Bruno Fabre reminds us, before concluding: "This continuity would never have been possible without all the efforts made by the 5,000 employees who make up our University. That's what we've achieved too!
The social report also provides a detailed snapshot of the breakdown of the University's workforce by gender. As in previous years, the overall workforce is evenly divided between the sexes, with 50.6% women and 49.4% men at the UM. The imbalance becomes more marked when we look at the breakdown by professional category. For example, women make up only 40% of teaching-research staff, while men are in the minority among administrative and support staff, making up only 38% of the workforce. This proportion rises to 45% in category A (the most senior posts). Good news! The percentage of women is increasing in the "researchers" category, with women now accounting for 49% of this category, up from 46% in 2019.
In terms of recruitment, 62% of all new recruits for salaried administrative and support staff are women. Of the 21 professors-researchers recruited in 2020 (single- and double-board members combined), 14 are women. Among university professors, only 23% of those promoted in 2020 are women. This low rate rises to 35% among lecturers.