Operational Directory of Professions and Jobs (ROME)

The new ROME 4.0 offers major innovations for the optimization of skills and employment in France. Overview of the innovations to be seized.
The Operational Directory of Professions and Jobs (ROME)
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The Pôle emploi provides companies with a directory of all trades grouped by cards andorganized by professional fields. The Répertoire Opérationnel des Métiers et des Emplois (ROME) is an essential tool for companies to identify the skills needed for each of the roles in their organization. This tool is also intended to help workers find jobs in line with their current qualifications.

On March 23, in collaboration with France Relance and the Plan d'investissement dans les skills, the Pôle Emploi updated this directory by adding 4 innovations. These innovations aim to respond to major employment issues such as the shortage of skills, the rapid evolution of professions and the diffusion of new skills resulting from ecological and digital transitions. We decipher their implications in this article.

Presentation of the Répertoire Opérationnel des Métiers et des Emplois (ROME)

What is ROME 4.0?

The ROME 4. 0 is an important tool for companies and workers. It provides a better understanding of the skills needed for each position, facilitates professional transitions and disseminates the new skills needed in organizations. This new version is a response to the major employment issues and allows us to better capitalize on the assets of each talent. It is an invaluable guide for projects to build and update reference systems at skills.

Illustration of a repository of skills
Illustration of the skills

The major employment issues addressed by the new ROME 4.0

Shortages of skills

This is a structural problem in the labor market. Many companies are struggling to find the skills needed for certain positions, while many workers are out of work. ROME 4.0 aims to solve this problem by allowing companies to better understand the skills needed for each position. They can also rely on their industry's job observatories.

Thirst for mobility

86% of French employees are considering changing jobs. The ROME 4.0 is an essential tool to facilitate these professional transitions. It allows talents to better understand their current skills and the gateways to professional opportunities close to their aspirations.

Dissemination of new skills resulting from ecological and digital transitions

Ecological and digital transitions are creating new skills needed in the job market, and this is one of the main challenges for HR teams in the future. Taking into consideration this expanded nomenclature that constitutes the ROME 4.0 accelerates their dissemination in organizations, thus facilitating the adaptation of workers to changes.

Example of the new jobs in the Finance Department: 
  1. CSR Data Analyst : this professional would be in charge of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data related to corporate social responsibility, in order to optimize performance in terms of sustainable development and CSR.
  2. Sustainable finance expert: with the rise of green bonds, social bonds and sustainable bonds, this expert would be responsible for identifying sustainable finance opportunities for the company and steering projects in this area.
  3. Financial Innovation Manager : this professional would be responsible for exploring new opportunities in digital finance (cryptocurrencies, tokens, smart contracts, etc.) and identifying new business models that could be relevant for the company.
  4. Financial Artificial Intelligence Analyst : this professional would be responsible for developing AI models for the analysis of complex financial data, such as high-frequency trading, capital market operations, and investments.
  5. CSR Compliance Officer : This professional would be responsible for ensuring the company's compliance with sustainability and CSR standards and regulations, including ensuring that robust compliance policies and procedures are in place.

The rapid pace of business transformation calls on companies and candidates to rely on ergonomic tools that contribute to the need for more reliable assessment of skills and the construction of more individualized development plans.

The Rome 4.0 Goals
ROME 4.0 Objectives

What are the 4 main new features of ROME 4.0?

The four main innovations of the Répertoire Opérationnel des Métiers et des Emplois (ROME) 4.0 are the precision of the job nomenclature, the new services that surround the offer, its ability to support the transformation of jobs and the real common language that it brings to each HR action. Let's take a closer look:

A redesigned nomenclature for a more accurate description of jobs.

This first innovation consists of an improvement in the description of occupations. By describing them more precisely, based on the skills required and the contexts in which they are practiced, this instrument adds value to the constitution of reference systems. This should lead to a better understanding of the trades and the skills required to occupy them.

New services and uses to capitalize on the potential of the new directory.

The innovation aims to develop new services to facilitate the dissemination of information on trades and skills, and to better exploit the data collected through ROME 4.0. Among these services is the provision of more legible mobility areas and gateways.

A repository that becomes agile to adapt to changes in the business.

This initiative will facilitate the permanent updating of the ROME and thus respond to the rapid changes in occupations and skills, particularly those induced by the ecological and digital transitions.

The use of a shared language to facilitate understanding and internal communication.

This provision is particularly important, as it aims to enable professionals to better understand the gaps between what they have today and what the future holds. It also aims to facilitate communication between the various employment actors, using a common denominator for the company's activities: Jobs & Skills Management In particular, internal recruitment, mentoring and training will be more easily managed.

In addition, this last device has an impact on professional transitions, which have reached 26% of the active population in the last three years, according to the observatory of professional trajectories

The work of France relance and the Investment Plan of the skills highlights other critical dimensions of valuing know-how.

The 4 new features of ROME 4.0
The 4 new features of ROME 4.0

Additional Benefits of ROME 4.0 Enrichment

The addition of skills transverse

The ROME 4.0 takes into account skills cross-cutting skills, which are essential to adapt to changes in the work environment. These skills include, for example, communication, problem solving, creativity and collaboration. The inclusion of these skills in the ROME 4.0 is a lever for both employees and companies: 

  • For workers, it is about gaining a better understanding of the soft skills skills required not only for a trade but for an organization as a whole. Sector-specific know-how is one of the categories of skills highlighted.
  • For companies, this means being able to respond to potential temporary needs to reallocate resources, such as during the last health crisis. Valuing these assets shared by several employees is also a way to enhance its unique expertise. 

Recognition of informal skills

The ROME 4.0 now recognizes informal skills , i.e. those obtained outside the framework of formal education or vocational training. This recognition is important because it allows the skills acquired by workers throughout their career to be valued, including during personal or associative experiences. This state of mind, which aims to consider the full range of experiences and therefore the skills of individuals, is an additional asset from a professional mobility perspective.

Identification of emerging skills

What is an emerging skill ?

The skills are those skills, knowledge and competencies that are needed to cope with new trends and new demands in the labor market. They are often related to innovation, digitization, collaboration and complex problem solving. They can be specific to an industry or sector, or they can be cross-cutting and apply to several fields.

The ROME 4.0 identifies them skills so that workers can better anticipate the essential aspects of their future jobs, and train accordingly. Companies will also be able to better anticipate the skills that will be needed in the future, in order to better prepare their staff and ensure their competitiveness.

Dashboard of emerging skills
dashboard of skills emerging in the Neobrain tool

Conclude on the new directory

In summary, this enhanced directory is a testament to the need to match offers and resources, as more than 360,000 positions remain to be filled by the end of 2022. The four major new features proposed will certainly have an impact on the open-mindedness of recruiters, who will evolve their practices towards a more neutral use of skills than of experience or similarity in the professions practiced in the past. As for companies, they will benefit from an improved system of describing the qualifications and behaviors needed in their environment. 

This instrument also requires a cultural evolution to recognize the skills acquired informally and to acquire software tools that identify and disseminate emerging skills to the most relevant people. The corollary of this approach skills is the establishment of a training policy that capitalizes on new opportunities to increase skills : collaborative learning, micro-learning, mentoring, ....

We propose to see this in more detail: 

The skill thus becomes a common language for companies and employees, allowing a better understanding of each other's needs and professional opportunities. It is at the heart of Neobrain's belief in a progressive approach to the organization centered around skills.