Trajectories of employees’ learning intentions and training opportunities in relation to job insecurity and psychological contract breach

Abstract

ABSTRACT Employees need to continuously refine and broaden their skill sets throughout their careers to increase their flexibility in the ever-changing labour market. We explore longitudinal profiles of the extent to which employees are willing (i.e., one’s learning intention) and able (i.e., one’s training opportunities) to participate in formal development activities. We investigated the role of job insecurity as a predictor, and psychological contract breach as an outcome, of these trajectories. We used three-wave longitudinal data over a one-year period from 846 Belgian employees. Latent class growth analysis revealed four profiles: decreasingly able but continuously not willing (27%), continuously neither able nor willing (3%), continuously moderately able and decreasingly willing (15%) and continuously able and decreasingly willing (55%). When employees had higher job insecurity scores, they had a higher likelihood of belonging to the continuously moderately able and decreasingly willing trajectory. This indicates that while individuals in an uncertain job situation have a higher, but slightly decreasing, learning intention, they consistently view limited opportunities to do so. Moreover, trajectories characterized by stable and low training opportunities had higher perceptions of psychological contract breach.