JOB COMMITMENT OF PROSPECTIVE SKILLED WORKERS AND EXECUTIVES IN GERMAN HORTICULTURE

Skills shortage due to the demographic change is a major future concern in horticultural vocations. Horticulture’s weaknesses in the competition for young employees are the image of this profession, comparable low remuneration and working conditions with physical strain. A central competitive edge in this context is job commitment. The aim of this project was the development of a management information system for effectively measuring, managing and developing job commitment. Today’s commitment research is based on the importance performance analysis, a method to identify gaps between target and actual business. A paper and pencil study among n=446 vocational school and technical college students of German horticulture was conducted. Respondents were asked for overall commitment and importance and satisfaction of 32 aspects of different subjects of working conditions. The results are displayed in a management grid. The resulting grid quadrants were named “motivators”, “opportunities”, “necessities” and “possible savings”. It can be shown that most aspects in the necessities quadrant perform above average. Motivators to increase job commitment are predominantly aspects of the topics “work activities” and “superior/head”, whereas satisfaction especially of the “superior/head” aspects is average or under average. An important insight is that many aspects in the opportunities quadrant perform below average. These aspects belonging to leadership and organisation in horticultural companies can be regarded as lost occasions because improvements in these areas are economical and only dependent on behavioural changes in management. Altogether, the approach offers perspectives for advances in job commitment to strengthen the horticultural sector for the competition for qualified workers.