The skills development plan: what a training provider must know

When a French company contacts you to train its employees, it is not simply buying a service: it is executing its plan de développement des compétences (skills development plan). Understanding this framework — who decides, who pays, which documents flow — is what separates a training provider (organisme de formation) that looks credible to an HR department from one that discovers the rules mid-project.

What is the plan de développement des compétences?

The plan de développement des compétences is the successor to the old “plan de formation”, renamed by the 2018 reform. It lists all the training actions decided by the employer for the benefit of its employees: regulatory training, upskilling on core trades, support for new tools or reorganisations.

The framework distinguishes two families of actions:

• Mandatory actions: those required by a legal or regulatory text to carry out an activity or role (safety authorisations, regulated certifications…). They take place during working hours, with pay maintained.
• Other actions: those the employer freely decides on to develop skills. They take place during working hours in principle, with regulated possibilities for training outside working hours.

The key point for a provider: the employer decides the plan. Your counterpart is not the trainee but the company — and behind it, very often, an OPCO (the sector body that manages pooled training funds) co-financing the action.

What this changes commercially for your organisation

Selling into the skills development plan is B2B selling with specific rules:

• Your contacts are HR people (or the owner in a small business): they think in terms of skills gaps, annual budgets and legal obligations to secure — not in terms of a course catalogue. Your pitch must start from their business need.
• The budget calendar matters: companies generally build their plan at the end of the year for the following one. Prospecting in September–November means arriving when decisions are made; showing up in January is often too late for that year’s budget.
• OPCOs co-fund companies with fewer than 50 employees: the pooled funds earmarked for the skills development plan benefit these companies, according to each OPCO’s own priorities and rates. For a very small company, that funding can turn “too expensive” into “fundable” — our guide to OPCO funding for a training provider walks through the mechanics.

A provider who can tell a small-business owner “your OPCO may cover part of this action, here is how to file the request” sells better than one who just sends a price.

The documents the company and the OPCO expect from you

The paper trail is what makes or breaks payment: an incomplete file delays or blocks it. Here are the documents typically expected:

Document	When	Purpose
Quote, then training agreement (convention)	Before the action	Price the action, then give it its legal framework (clauses of article D6353-1)
Detailed programme	Before the action	Objectives, content, duration, format, prerequisites — part of the funding file
Attendance sheets or connection logs	During	Prove the employees’ attendance
Certificate of completion (certificat de réalisation)	After	Attest that the action was delivered, trigger payment
Compliant invoice	After	Close the file with the company or the OPCO

Two documents concentrate the mistakes. First the agreement: its clauses are set by the Labour Code, and our article on the training agreement (convention de formation) reviews them. Then the certificate of completion: since OPCO procedures went digital, this standardised document has become the key that unlocks payment — the guide to the certificat de réalisation explains how to issue it without errors.

Qualiopi: essential or not in this context?

The nuance is critical, and often misunderstood by companies themselves:

• If the action is funded by the OPCO (notably through the pooled skills-development funds for companies under 50 employees), the provider’s Qualiopi certification is required. Without it, no funding.
• If the company pays directly, out of its own budget with no funding claim, Qualiopi is not legally mandatory. Many procurement departments nonetheless ask for it as a mark of seriousness.

Our article Is Qualiopi mandatory or not? covers every scenario. Also worth knowing: when a company trains its own employees with its own trainers, this is internal training, which follows specific rules — a topic on which a well-informed provider can usefully advise clients.

The ROI argument: training as a measurable investment

When an owner hesitates to commit budget, the strongest argument is not regulatory but economic. A study by Barrett and O’Connell published in 2001 in Industrial and Labor Relations Review, based on data from Irish companies, shows that so-called “general” training — training that builds transferable skills — has a positive and significant effect on productivity growth in the companies that fund it.

For your sales pitch, this means two things:

• The skills development plan is not a cost line but a productivity lever documented by research: a solid answer to the “we’ll train when things improve” reflex.
• Transferable training (management, office tools, languages, methods) fully belongs in the pitch, not only the mandatory courses a company merely endures.

Stay careful, though: cite the demonstrated effect without promising your client a specific percentage gain — every company is different, and the study reports averages across firms.

The frequent mistakes providers make on this market

• Starting or invoicing without a signed agreement: in a dispute or an inspection, the absence of a compliant convention undermines both payment and compliance.
• Ignoring OPCO deadlines: each OPCO has its own filing rules, sometimes requiring the request before the action starts. A late filing can be rejected — and our article explains what to do when an OPCO refuses funding.
• Promising unconfirmed funding: “your OPCO will pay for it” commits only you as long as the written approval has not been obtained. Always make your statements conditional on the funder’s decision.
• Sending a sloppy certificate of completion: dates inconsistent with attendance sheets, wrong duration — payment is suspended until it is corrected.
• Neglecting the post-training phase: assessing what was learned and debriefing the company prepares next year’s budget renewal… with you rather than a competitor.

Take action

The Complete Kit Certif contains the agreement, programme, attendance and certificate-of-completion templates you need to respond cleanly to companies and OPCOs, aligned with the framework’s 32 indicators (€297, 14-day guarantee, documents in French). Setting up your training business? The ebook Créer son organisme de formation en 30 jours structures every step, or choose the complete pack of kit + ebook.