Companies highjacking the CPF

It has been only weeks since the law 'Liberté de Choisir Son Avenir Professionnel' was passed and that we moved into phase 2 of the CPF era.

Wasn't it supposed to be all about allowing individuals easier access to training and more freedom of choice?

It is no surprise that companies are now persuading their employees to use their CPF budgets to fund training from now on. They did it with the DIF. Then they used the CPF entreprise. Now that only companies with less than 50 employees have to pay the 'plan de développement des compétences' tax they are seeing their employees' CPF budgets as a way of avoiding spending any money on training.

In 2019, TLNS has already seen a shift with some of its major clients who previously funded training using 'plan de formation'. They are now telling employees that they can 'mobiliser leur CPF' - even for training from which the company would benefit and would appear necessary for a person's job.

But there's another worrying trend emerging. We know that Training Managers are having to reinvent themselves and are supposed to be able to advise employees wanting to use their CPF. But we have already seen several cases this year of Training departments actually setting up CPF-funded courses for employees and even NEGOTIATING conditions! In some cases we haven't even been able to speak to the beneficiaries before starting the course!

Maybe I'm being naive, but wouldn't that appear to be in contradiction to the spirit of this law?

If the previous purchasers of 'plan de formation-funded' training start meddling in CPF negotiations with our potential students there will be a temptation to bring us down on price because they've seen cheaper offers elsewhere.

We could find ourselves in a situation where we have sold the deal to the beneficiary and then the Training department tells us that we're too expensive!

Bearing this in mind, we will need to work harder at justifying our pricing - especially as average CPF prices are based on blended type formulas. Training managers have got used to seeing rates of 35-40€ an hour for CPF training so this is going to be a real challenge.