The retraining and mobility motivations of key personnel: dependencies in the Finnish business environment

Abstract

Key personnel's long-term commitment to an organization will soon become a fiction unless companies really begin to pay attention to improving it. To a great extent the cause of this development is the increasing uncertainty in the permanence of one's job, which leads those interested in career advancement to unexpected career changes. This paper studies the retraining and mobility motivations of 726 key personnel in Finnish companies, by endeavouring to discover possible correlations, on one hand, with the key person's background and set of values and, on the other, with various company-related factors. Most of those with both retraining and mobility motivations turned out to be dynamic young people either at the early or mid-stages of their career, although mobility motivation at least appeared to last throughout. Strong career commitment was linked with mobility motivation, whereas a commitment to personal and professional development was linked with retraining motivation. Thus, objective career development is promoted primarily by mobility, and subjective career development by retraining. Both motivations were linked with the company's poorly implemented career management programme. Consequently, companies should look upon this as an important covert personnel risk and endeavour to turn this into a personnel development opportunity through internal mobility or training, in order not to lose its key personnel with highest competence and development potential.