Navigating the World of Strategic Planning: Exploring the Differences Between GPEC, GEPP, and SWP

Are you lost among the various acronyms GPEC, GEPP, or SWP? Don’t worry, you’re in the right place.

In this article, I will demystify these obscure terms and clearly explain what they represent, their objectives, and how they interrelate.

Get ready to uncover the secrets behind these enigmatic terms and understand how they can enhance your Human Capital in your organization.

Let’s begin.

Before diving into the heart of the matter, I will clarify these three acronyms:

• GPEC stands for “Gestion Prévisionnelle des Emplois et des Compétences” (Forecasted Management of Jobs and Skills). This acronym refers to a strategic approach aimed at anticipating and adapting an organization’s workforce to its future needs.
• GEPP stands for “Gestion des Emplois et des Parcours Professionnels” (Management of Jobs and Professional Paths). This approach emphasizes the individual management of employees within the organization. Its main objective is to promote the development of skills and careers of employees, while aligning their personal aspirations with the company’s needs.
• SWP, or “Strategic Workforce Planning,” focuses on the strategic planning of the workforce. It is a method that allows for anticipating and responding to the company’s long-term skill needs.

Now that we have clarified these acronyms, it’s time to explore each one in more detail and see how they interact.

I will share my vision of how GPEC, GEPP, and SWP interlock to form a coherent set of workforce management practices, aiming to ensure the alignment between available skills and the company’s needs.

Let’s get started!

What is GPEC?

Let’s start with what is somewhat outdated: GPEC!

GPEC, or “Gestion Prévisionnelle des Emplois et des Compétences” (Forecasted Management of Jobs and Skills), is a framework established in France in 2005.

It is rooted in a law (the Social Cohesion Programming Act, also known as the “Borloo Law”) that companies with over 300 employees were required to follow. These companies had to negotiate with social partners to implement a GPEC system, which needed to be reviewed every three years.

In essence, GPEC included principles that companies had to adhere to, such as the conditions for professional mobility, the major orientations for professional training over three years, etc.

At its core, GPEC was a strategic approach designed to anticipate changes in jobs and skills within an organization (as its name suggests 😉).

Significantly, GPEC introduced a more proactive and strategic management of human resources aligned with long-term organizational goals into the HR world. It also promoted better skills management by identifying key competencies necessary to ensure the company’s sustainability and competitiveness. Additionally, GPEC introduced an ‘analytical’ notion into HR management by utilizing ‘social’ data that had previously been underutilized.

In practice, however, many companies viewed GPEC more as an obligation, focusing primarily on fulfilling the legal requirements: having a GPEC agreement negotiated every three years with social partners.

In theory, according to the definition by the Ministry of Labor: “Forecasted management of jobs and skills (GPEC) is a method for adapting – in the short and medium term – jobs, staffing, and skills to the requirements stemming from companies’ strategies and changes in their economic, technological, social, and legal environments.”

Thus, decisions resulting from GPEC were supposed to be directly linked to the company’s strategy. In reality, GPEC was often treated as an HR process managed by HR, after the company’s strategy had been defined (or even detached from the said strategy).

This process was mainly used to define the training orientations of organizations over three years. Once the plan was established, it was set aside and re-evaluated three years later…

Not very agile or flexible. And in today’s uncertain world, where everything evolves increasingly rapidly, this could be problematic.

Moreover, GPEC could be perceived as somewhat akin to “Madame Irma” (a famous fortune teller). How could one predict economic and social developments in an uncertain world where external events to organizations are unpredictable?

This led to the evolution of this law in 2017, creating GEPP…

What is GEPP, which expanded the scope of GPEC in 2017?

The GEPP (Gestion des Emplois et des Parcours Professionnels) is a French legal framework that originated with the 2017 Macron Ordinances, later reinforced by the 2018 Law for the Future of the Workforce.

The shift in terminology aims to encourage greater agility and flexibility in response to labour market and skill changes. It also seeks to develop employee employability to help prevent layoffs by anticipating organisational needs and promoting skills development accordingly.

GEPP’s approach centres on aligning jobs, skills, and career aspirations of employees with the organisation’s strategic goals. This people-first approach prioritises employability and ensures that training paths align closely with business needs.

So, what’s the key difference between GEPP and its predecessor, GPEC?

The distinction largely lies in the scale of analysis.

GPEC (Gestion Prévisionnelle des Emplois et des Compétences) focused on offering broad, strategic guidance. Its aim was to anticipate and plan for how organisations might evolve, thereby identifying future employment and skills requirements at an organisational level.

GEPP, on the other hand, takes a more individual-focused approach, concentrating on employability. It prioritises individual skill development and career pathways that meet the organisation’s evolving needs.

While GPEC had a predominantly strategic scope, GEPP leans more toward operational strategy. (Yes, there’s a bit of wordplay here). Think of it as contrasting strategy with tactics: GPEC was often considered too static, whereas GEPP is more dynamic and adaptable.

Personally, I believe both of these frameworks have a worthy ambition: putting skills development back at the heart of business discussions and strategy.

However, the reality is that these agreements have often been seen for what they are—agreements. They’re mandatory negotiations between the company and its social partners, often viewed as an administrative exercise imposed on HR policies.

And if we consider the economic context in which GPEC emerged, it’s clear that it was a different era. One of GPEC’s primary objectives was to mitigate redundancies.

Another criticism of GPEC was, as I mentioned earlier, its static nature. It viewed employees in terms of their past achievements rather than their potential for growth. This is no longer the case with GEPP, which is now about career pathways and future potential.

So, where does SWP (Strategic Workforce Planning) fit in? How does it compare to GEPP?

To start my research, I thought I’d tap into the world of new technologies and AI. So, I asked Gemini-Pro what it considered the difference between GEPP and SWP to be.

Here’s a summary of its response, in table format:

GEPP (Gestion des Emplois et des Parcours Professionnels)	SWP (Strategic Workforce Planning)
Objective: Develop and manage employees to meet the company’s current and future needs.	Objective: Align the workforce with the company’s long-term strategic goals.
Time Horizon: Medium-term (1 to 3 years)	Time Horizon: Long-term (3 to 5 years or more)
Scope: Specific to a role or group of roles	Scope: Organisation-wide
Focus: Defines job skills and responsibilities, creates career paths, and plans employee development.	Focus: Identifies future talent needs, plans for succession, and optimises workforce deployment.
Process: Involves job analysis, role descriptions, performance evaluations, and training planning.	Process: Involves a deep analysis of external and internal environments, workforce forecasting, and gap-bridging strategies.

Am I fully convinced by this? Not entirely! 😁

If you’re unsure what SWP is, I recommend taking a quick break to read this article: What is SWP?

My hesitation comes from the feeling that once again, strategy and tactics are seen as separate, when in my view, they’re complementary. How can we “develop and manage employees to meet the company’s current and future needs” without thinking about the company’s strategic goals? And, equally, how can we aim to “align the workforce with the company’s long-term objectives” without a tactical approach?

Future needs don’t just appear from nowhere. One of the key challenges for companies is to adapt to market changes and ensure the right people are in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills—and most importantly, that they’re motivated and engaged.

If we’re considering career paths or development plans, it’s because there’s a need for it—whether internally or externally. There’s an objective we’re pursuing (hello, Simon Sinek’s Why).

And if employees don’t buy into the company’s strategy, well, you can roll out all the impressive training plans you want… but employees aren’t robots, and they’ll show their dissatisfaction (or even leave the company).

Ultimately, I think the problem with SWP is that people often get fixated on the “S” (Strategy) part of it. In many companies attempting SWP, it’s the execution that falters. The process remains theoretical with a purely strategic view, yet its real value lies in its practical implementation.

In my opinion, SWP combines the best of GPEC and GEPP. It merges a long-term, strategic view with a shorter- to medium-term, tactical one.

SWP can support a large-scale organisational transformation—like repositioning in a market or breaking into a new one—typically with a medium- to long-term horizon.

It can also address shorter-term projects like relocating a department, developing a new expertise in response to a significant shift (technological or regulatory, for instance), or simply ensuring succession planning.

The fundamental difference between GEPP and SWP is that there’s no legal framework for SWP. Where companies see GEPP as a regulatory requirement, SWP is often seen as a necessity (by those organisations willing to invest in such initiatives).

GEPP is typically updated every three years, but there’s a perception that it’s too rigid. Yet, nothing stops companies from revisiting it sooner and refreshing their hypotheses. Well—except that, as a formal agreement, it does come with guidelines! 😉

In short, the rigidity of GEPP comes from its regulatory roots.

Another key difference between the two processes is ownership. GEPP tends to be an HR matter, whereas SWP involves the entire leadership team (what you might call “the Cs” in English). It’s not just HR’s concern.

Ultimately, regardless of the approach taken to develop employees’ skills or anticipate job and resource needs, if this is seen as a constraint or a cost, it’s unlikely to translate into much action. The whole exercise could be reduced to a tick-box exercise to keep out of trouble.

It really comes down to perception:

• Either you view Human Capital as an investment, recognising its importance and relevance to your organisation’s survival…

• Or you see it as a cost, a constraint hindering your organisation’s growth—and thereby minimise HR budgets as much as possible.

Whichever approach you choose, only time will tell if it was the right one… or not.

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