"Green" Skills: Training in Service of Eco-Responsible Home-Based Practices

Published on: 04/06/2021Updated on: 04/06/2021

As awareness of environmental responsibility becomes increasingly prominent, companies are gradually committing to implementing virtuous behaviors. But what about domestic work professionals (childcare providers, childminders, personal carers, and family assistants)? IPERIA, the national platform for sector professionalization, has been studying occupations and skills for over 25 years. The objective is to qualify sector employees and job seekers entering it to align with society's evolution and emerging needs. Consideration of environmental impact and sustainable development is an integral part of the training and certification offering that IPERIA provides to the professional branches of childcare providers and domestic employees. On the eve of World Environment Day, let's review these essential new "green" skills that enable engagement in eco-responsible practices.

What Do We Mean by Eco-Responsibility?

Eco-responsibility consists of limiting one's ecological footprint and environmental impact. It's an ethical and civic approach supported by implementing concrete actions and techniques. Good daily habits, such as:

Managing energy consumption and non-renewable resource usage
Controlling and reducing waste
Reducing air, water, and soil pollution
Decreasing greenhouse gas emissions

"Green" Skills Accessible Through Training and Certification

Based on occupational studies, focus groups with sector employees, societal changes, and current legislation, IPERIA put eco-responsible practices at the heart of its thinking when redesigning the qualifications "Childcare Provider/Childminder", "Dependency Personal Carer", and "Family Assistant," for which it has been the certifying body since 2009. Thus, so-called "green" skills, linked to technological and ecological developments, have taken a significant place in these qualifications' frameworks, registered in the National Directory of Professional Certifications in June 2020. They are featured in a specific skills block: "Home and Laundry Care: Eco-Responsible Practices."

Additionally, the University of Home Care Services, IPERIA's partner, has created or revised modules ("Making Eco-Responsible Cleaning Products" and "Integrating Eco-Responsible Professional Practices," for example) to enrich the priority training offering dedicated to employees in the individual employment and domestic work sector. The objective is to enable employees to acquire or strengthen the necessary skills in an already undertaken approach. Tips, rituals, habits—good practices in eco-friendly actions shape daily life.

Among the identified skills accessible through training and/or certification, we find:

To limit or reduce water and energy consumption, you can program automatic room temperature settings, adjust toilet flushes for moderate consumption, or install automatic shut-off taps.
Recycling and waste reduction: implementing selective sorting, ensuring recycling whenever possible, favoring products without packaging or with reduced/reusable packaging...
Reducing food waste and food's environmental impact: optimally preserving and reusing food leftovers, favoring meals with low ecological impact adapted to people's nutritional needs...
Maintaining a healthy home environment involves prioritizing natural products for cleaning and/or gardening, ensuring room ventilation, and taking precautions during pollution peaks.
Raising family awareness of eco-friendly actions: Monitoring eco-friendly practices and raising individual employers' awareness according to needs while adopting an appropriate approach. Implementing eco-responsible actions with children creates favorable situations (e.g., picking activities, food workshops).

Employees as BOTH Actors AND Vectors of Change

Like everyone else, citizens, personal carers, family assistants, childminders, and childcare providers are actors in the energy transition in their personal lives. However, their profession gives them an additional dimension. As true professionals, they can develop skills to engage in an eco-responsible approach. These skills immediately apply to their professional activities, allowing them to reduce their ecological footprint and gain confidence in their practices.

Because they support individual employers and families daily, domestic work sector employees are also vectors of energy transition. Through awareness-raising activities, with children, for example, they have a fundamental role in promoting and supporting changing household consumption and waste management habits... A virtuous circle that proves itself. Anthony Terme, Head of the telephone platform, explains: "We regularly receive requests from employees who are already engaged in an eco-responsible approach and contact us to find other action drivers and raise awareness among their individual employers. They see benefits in training and certification for themselves and families, especially when the latter support and accompany them in their training project."

Society's collective consciousness of eco-responsibility is strengthening. The individual employment and domestic work sector is no exception and should intensify in the coming years. The ability to implement eco-friendly actions could become a sought-after skill in the future, perhaps even one recruitment criterion among others for families wanting to raise their children's environmental awareness. Through its training and certification offerings, IPERIA provides employees the keys to adopting and transmitting eco-friendly actions while developing their employability.