Career planning takes place on the doorstep in Switzerland
The online professional network XING wanted to know what the real working world of the Swiss actually looks like in the area of conflict between internationalization and local roots. The main finding: For Swiss professionals, working life takes place on their doorstep - even though a surprisingly large number of them state that their job is not tied to a specific location at all. Few of them have ever gained work experience abroad, and the vast majority would also like to have a job close to home in the future.
There is no question that Switzerland is a globally networked nation and attracts numerous international companies as an attractive business location. Our education system promotes multilingualism, and a powerful digital infrastructure is bringing the Swiss economic area and the rest of the world ever closer together. Nevertheless, the Swiss working world ticks locally in many respects. A representative survey of 1,002 German-speaking Swiss professionals on the subject of local roots in the world of work, conducted by the market and opinion research company Marketagent.com on behalf of XING Switzerland, shows that career planning takes place virtually on the doorstep.
Sedentary Swiss in mobile jobs
43 percent of respondents agree with the statement that they could do their job from anywhere in the world. At 47 percent, agreement is particularly high among people with higher education. In addition, women are more likely to agree with the statement at 45 percent than men at 42 percent. However, this decoupling of work from location is not reflected in actual job mobility behavior. A quarter of those in employment (25 percent) have never worked outside their own canton. 59 percent say they have already worked outside their own canton within German-speaking Switzerland. Only 14 percent have gained professional experience in other language regions of Switzerland - and just 8 percent have worked outside Europe.
Job search on the doorstep
Although jobs are becoming more mobile thanks to digitization, German-speaking Swiss professionals see their professional future close to home: Almost one in three professionals (31 percent) would look for their next job directly at their current place of residence. For just under half (47 percent) of those surveyed, the next job may be no more than 50 kilometers from home. Only just 4 percent said they would also consider a job outside Europe for their next position. There are clear differences between the sexes: four out of ten women (41 percent) are looking for their next job directly at home. Among men, the figure is only 23 percent. The strong sense of being tied to a particular location is evident across all age groups. Even among 18- to 24-year-olds, 21 percent would like their next job to be at their current place of residence. Another 54 percent of young professionals would accept a maximum distance of 50 kilometers.
Professional networks are also strongly tied to location
Most employees (52 percent) have their professional contacts primarily in their own region. A further 31 percent have their professional contacts mainly within Switzerland and for 10 percent, the majority of professional contacts are spread across the German-speaking region. Significantly more than half of the respondents in these three groups (59 percent) also state that they have no professional contacts at all outside the German-speaking area.
Importance of personal contacts increases despite digitization
Almost two out of three Swiss professionals (62 percent) believe that the usefulness of their professional network will increase over the next five years. And despite increasingly sophisticated algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence, almost three-quarters of professionals (72 percent) expect personal contacts to become more important for career planning as digitization advances.
Commenting on the report, XING Switzerland CEO Yves Schneuwly says: "Our findings show that digitization and a strong regional focus go hand in hand in the Swiss working world. Professionals want a job close to home and rely on strongly localized personal networks when looking for a job. Advancing digitization offers companies opportunities to better meet this need for geographic proximity in the future." According to Yves Schneuwly, it is also worth noting that "the professional world of women is much more localized than that of men. This is a result that needs to be taken into account when it comes to ensuring equal opportunities and specifically engaging well-educated women in professional life."
The study including graphics is available here.
