After the Sextant audit on psychosocial risks management prefers control over listening

Are we finally going to get action after Sextant’s audit of psychosocial risks (RPS) at the Agency? After taking three months to reflect on the results of the audit, which took a year for Sextant to complete, management gave staff representatives an overview of the measures it plans to undertake at the monthly meeting of the Works Council (CSE) on July 3, 2026. In our view they are not only inadequate but often ill-suited to to address the major challenges regarding psychosocial risks identified at the Agency.

The plan outlined by management consists of six pillars:

• Objectify and manage workloads

• Establish a culture of evaluation and professional feedback

• Formalize roles and responsibilities

• Strengthen management training

• Prevent and manage conflicts

• Prepare for the transformation of job roles

These may sound like constructive objectives, but the discussion only reinforced our concern that management would use the audit to introduce measures that it has long wanted to implement and which will only aggravate the situation (read our previous tract).

The first two if not three objectives seek to tighten control over employees. Objectifying and managing workloads is an important objective as it has been one of the major sources of psychosocial problems at the Agency. But unfortunately, management’s plan is to measure the performance of employees rather than measure the workload: You signal to your manager you have too much work. Your manager will then monitor your work closely for a couple of weeks. At the end of this period, which is likely to create additional tension, an employee is as likely to hear how his or her performance is the problem as a recognition that the workload is unreasonable. Management thus intends to respond to what Sextant’s audit highlighted as a systemic problem of excessive workload stemming from chronic under-staffing amidst drastic cost-cutting measures by framing the issue in individual and psychological terms. Is management making your life miserable just to save a few pennies, or are you simply becoming too fragile?

Feedback is important to improve performance, and it happens already in existing meetings, if not in day-to-day interactions. Meanwhile, performance evaluations must be objective. SUD has opposed their widespread introduction at AFP because of the difficulty in ensuring their objectivity, in particular for journalists. This does not seem to bother management, which openly acknowledged that it would evaluate “interpersonal skills”. This is a vague a term that opens the gate wide to discrimination. Such evaluations will only increase frustration in the Agency.

It was clear to us that HR is highly motivated regarding the first three objectives as they were far more detailed and precise than the subsequent three. Much like in the negotiations concerning Professional Equality – Quality of Work Life agreement, HR’s vision – and its fads – take precedence over everything else. Take for example the fourth objective: more training for managers! For months, SUD has been calling in vain for an assessment of the effectiveness of managerial training, which can be extremely expensive when it comes to coaching. However, management intends to spend more without evaluating whether it is money well spent.

Employee suffering: the fifth wheel on the wagon

Management’s list of objectives concludes with efforts to prevent and manage conflicts as well as preparing for the transformation of job roles. Both are responsibilities HR already has and – in our opinion – has largely failed. We’re concerned that management intends to abdicate its responsibility in defusing conflicts by encouraging the training of staff mediators. As for preparing for the transformation of job roles, this is an element of a process the French call GPEC that regularly looks at the skills a company will need in the coming years and offers training to staff to meet those needs. This is particularly important when major shifts in technology or business profiles can see many roles no longer needed. AFP’s management has been trying – and failing – to carry out a GPEC for the past quarter century. It is trying to do so again, but we’re dubious of its utility when management has so far refused to acknowledge that introducing AI into the newsroom is aimed at cutting jobs, even as French regional newspaper group EBRA has used AI to cut 400 jobs.

The most glaring omission from this action plan is employees – even though Sextant repeatedly called for their inclusion in shaping both their own career paths and the Agency’s strategies. Management appears intent to impose the changes it wants in a top-down manner, thus ignoring recommendations to boost open dialog with staff and adopt a participatory approach concerning reforms as many of its projects have been viewed as incomprehensible and out of touch with the realities on the ground? Despite the audit and the no-confidence motion demonstrating severe divisions within the Agency, with many staff feeling neither recognized or valued, management’s approach indicates it has little intention to work to restore harmony.

Move along, there’s nothing to see here!

Sextant’s audit was supposed to serve as a diagnostic to help us determine what ills the Agency, and more importantly, how to successfully treat it. We have the impression that management doesn’t agree with the diagnosis and is thus adopting a different treatment. We don’t see how greater stress from a future need to constantly prove their efficiency and heightened anxiety regarding a future that continues to be shaped without their input will help improve morale. Furthermore, SUD questions how this plan addresses the scathing remarks made by the labor inspector about the harassment probes HR conducted when she attended a CSE meeting in 2025. If management persists in its deluded reveries, SUD will continue to support and listen to employees, regardless of their status, and calls on everyone to share the difficulties they encounter with us.

Genuine proof that employee mental health is being taken into account could begin with meaningful measures for fixed-term contract workers who have seen their opportunities dwindle by cost-cutting initiatives and whose situation was highlighted to management by Sextant during a previous expert assessment. Management speaks of intergenerational management in its training offerings, yet whom do they intend to manage if they exclude the youngest workers?

Paris, July 17, 2026

SUD-AFP (Solidarity-Unity-Democracy)

SUD-AFP is an intercategorial trade union that recognizes the essential contributions of each professional category to AFP’s public interest mission to which we are deeply committed. But this mission cannot rely upon constant sacrifices from staff. Join us to defend our rights, our working conditions, and the future of AFP.