A third of executives aspire to a professional retraining, only 8% take action
In his study Pathways & Inequalities trajectories dedicated to the professional retraining of executives*, APEC indicates that 31% of executives have a retraining project with the aim of changing jobs.
This intention is more widespread among unemployed executives (60%) and among executives under 35 (45%). On the other hand, it concerns less executives working in dynamic sectors or functions, in jobs under pressure such as IT or R&D engineering, for example.
Study “Professional retraining of executives”, Apec 2022
Executives would therefore be inclined to throw everything away! Except that from dream to reality, there is sometimes a big gap that even highly motivated executives do not seem ready to fill.
When it comes to taking action, executives seem to be a bit sluggish. According to APEC, only 8% of executives therefore have actually taken steps towards professional retraining.
Types of retraining wishes
Their motivations for changing jobs? They are diverse and varied and sometimes even add up.
To retrain because dissatisfied with his current job
- Search for meaning
- Need to bounce back
- Weariness, longing for a second wind
- Search for better working conditions
- Desire for social advancement
We obviously have to talk about the famous quest for meaning. You know the one that makes you feel out of step between your job and your aspirations, between your values and your initial training. In short, a job which, on a daily basis in the field, no longer suits you.
For some, it’s the job fatigue which initiates desires for change. “They want to get back on their feet by acquiring new skills and practicing a new job,” says the Apec study.
Others face a degradation of their working environment which may go as far as the termination of the contract (dismissal, conventional termination, etc.).
Finally, the lack of professional recognitionin terms of salary or promotion, also generates dissatisfaction, which pushes executives to consider a retraining project.
Change for personal reasons
- Search for better living conditions
- Want to reconnect with a passion
A reconfiguration of personal life can also explain (or add to) a professional retraining project. It can be related to the search for a better quality of lifeHas game-changing events (divorce, death, illness, etc.) or to positive changes in personal circumstances (moving house, birth of a child, etc.).
Few radical conversions
Contrary to popular belief, the desire for retraining is not that radical. In any case, less radical than among other aspirants to change.
In more than 6 cases out of 10, the executive’s choice is to move towards a profession close to his current profession. Only 15% of executives with a retraining project opt for a radically different profession. They want to break with their current situation by first changing sector of activity (82%), region (54%) or setting up their own business (56%).
Study “Professional retraining of executives”, Apec 2022
Professional retraining: executives activate several brakes not to start
Among the brakes that “block” executives in a potential retraining, we find
- The complexity of identifying the viability of their project when it is launched and therefore taking too much risk
- The difficulty of convincing the various interlocutors they will have to meet, whether to obtain a position or within the framework of a business creation.
- The feeling of not having the means to assume financially
- Fear of having less pay or less career prospects
- Fear of losing their social status. In short, the fear of downgrading!
- Their initial diploma: “For executives, the diploma is a determining factor in their professional career. Retraining means, for them, renouncing their professional identity. But they are attached and are attached to what determines them. And then, to practice another profession, it is essential, according to them, to train, resume studies and obtain a new diploma. It’s long, it’s expensive and often they don’t have the courage. They know, having themselves sometimes participated in recruitments, that the diploma is a filter in the candidate selection process. And they don’t want to go through that filter if they don’t have the right degree. We therefore arrive at a completely paradoxical situation: executives with a higher education diploma, therefore theoretically those who have the most possibilities of progressing in their career, find themselves the least free to move”, analyzes finely Laurent Polet, co- founder of the Primaveras school, also professor of management at CentraleSupélec.
* Study “Pathways and reality of professional retraining of executives”, December 2022
