Why Are France Telecom Workers Committing Suicide?

Some years ago, I wrote a short article about stress at work, referring to some groundbreaking research by organisational psychologists at London University. The UK Heath and Safety Executive (HSE) had asked the researchers to identify workplace stressors and they came up with nine, including heavy workloads, lack of control, poor communication, role ambiguity, job security, and lack of management support.

At the time, the UK was facing a flood of legal claims for workplace stress, even though the law was unclear about whether responsibility lay with the individual or the company. The HSE guidelines made clear that it was a shared responsibility between employees and managers. Both were expected to know their rights and responsibilities in regard to managing their own stress and that of their team.

As a result, we hardly ever read about stress at work in the UK. In France, the picture could not be more different. Over the last few months, there has been a public outcry over the suicides of 24 employees at France Telecom, apparently because of stress at work. The last victim, a 32-year-old former law student, threw herself out of her office window, after emailing her father a suicide note. Another said “management by terror” had driven him over the edge. “I am committing suicide because of my work at France Telecom. That’s the only reason.”

While the company claimed the suicides were the result of personal, not professional, issues and pointed out that the figures were in line with national statistics, the deaths have caused a political and media storm. Chairman and CEO Didier Lombard promised to halt the company’s change programme and introduce workplace counsellors, but this did not stop the public demand for a scapegoat. On Tuesday, Louis-Pierre Wenes, the architect of the company’s modernisation programme resigned.

It is surprising that France Telecom has attracted such ire. Leaders had argued, quite reasonably, that the company had to move with the times: customer demand for mobile phones rather than fixed lines meant massive restructuring was inevitable. The company avoided imposing mass redundancies, but asked staff to retrain for Orange call centres and in some cases, change locations. Fairly reasonable, you might think. Yet this did not stop one worker from stabbing himself repeatedly in the stomach when he was told he was being transferred to another post in the same town.

So why has some of France Telecom’s workforce reacted so violently? One argument is that the average age of 47 at the company makes it difficult for them to adapt to organisational change. Yet two of the suicides were of people aged only 28 and 32. A stronger argument is that French workers are resistant to change because they are one of the few workforces that still have a say in how they are managed. The 35-hour week, union representation, and strong employment laws protect workers’ rights, so any changes in working practices are difficult to push through. Compare this with employees in Anglo-American companies or emerging economies who have become flexible (perhaps too flexible) to change after accepting the mantra that ‘change is the only constant.’

But protecting workers’ rights and the French savoir vivre comes at a high cost for companies. As France Telecom has discovered, it’s not easy to restructure, shed employees, and retrain the workforce to cope with changing market demands. It’s clear that the company underestimated the stress of these changes on some of the workforce and the enormous impact of the suicides on the company’s reputation. The company’s share price is sliding and analysts are already questioning whether it can keep its restructuring process on track.

It is certainly a dilemma for leaders and managers. No one would like to have the death of an employee on their conscience, yet companies must move forward with the times, as M Lombard said. Perhaps the question is, how much change must we embrace, and how quickly? What is the tipping point? And who takes ultimate responsibility when things go badly wrong?

As ever, I am interested to hear what you think. Do you believe, as I do, that managers and employees should accept that change is inevitable and work together to share the burden of stress and organisational change? Or do you feel, as some of the France Telecom workers do, that companies go too far, driving employees to distraction with continuous change programmes, unfair demands, and unskilled management?