According to the EY attractiveness barometer, France has been at the top of the European rankings for 3 years. It mainly attracts investments in R&D and the industrial sector. On the other hand, investments in head offices have remained behind and remain one of our weak points. For comparison, the United Kingdom has hosted 1,044 head offices over the last ten years compared to 490 in France.
Paris fully contributes to the attractiveness of our country, but the status of capital is no longer enough to attract talent. It is time to give more importance to our metropolises! Indeed, France today benefits from an influence essentially centered around its capital, and less from its regional metropolises, which have a lower visibility and capacity of attraction than that of many of our European neighbors like Spain or Germany.
Three key levers
To strengthen the attractiveness of its metropolises both for talents and international headquarters, France can now leverage three key levers.
First of all, accessibility: direct air and TGV connections remain central to facilitating the mobility of talents and customers and thus connecting them to major global business hubs. Streamlining mobility can counterbalance the regional preference of candidates and thus allow the free movement of skills.
Then, the recent acceleration of the development of international schools in France by the Ministry of National Education constitutes the second pillar to be taken into account by companies to allow their foreign or French executives returning from expatriation to pursue their careers. in our metropolises with their families.
Finally, employability is also a guarantee of attractiveness. At a time when the digital and environmental transitions are accelerating – and when regional metropolises are teeming with projects, the acquisition of new skills likely to provide training for these new professions represents a source of opportunities for companies: both to consolidate their human capital and attract new profiles.
To compensate for a certain form of dropout of our country’s active population in mathematics and therefore digital technology, the government announced that 400,000 French people will receive professional digital training by 2027, including 20,000 in Marseille, with campuses dedicated like the Epic, the Platform and Theodora.
This crucial subject will be debated during the Aix Marseille Forum organized this Tuesday, September 26 by the Cercle des Estates of France and the economic development agency Provence Promotion.
We, companies fully committed to the attractiveness of France and the challenges of digital technology, are ready to work in collaboration with State services in order to play a major role in this transformation, which is more essential than ever for our competitiveness.
This article is originally published on lopinion.fr
