Impact of Frequent Relocation on Professional Development and Skill Acquisition

Abstract

The research explored the impact of frequent relocation on professional development and skill acquisition, focusing on the nomadic lifestyle's influence on career growth of employees. The research enhances the understanding of how mobility affects the employee’s long-term skill-building, career progression, and career satisfaction in food and beverages and in the textile Industry of Pakistan. The research expands on the difficulties faced by employees in integrating into new organizational cultures and teams, as well as the impact of mobility on their professional identity and skills development. The research is primary and conducted with pure qualitative methodology and an exploratory inductive approach. The researcher adopts the Interpretivism research philosophy to explore the phenomena and the dimensions of frequent mobility with its impacts on professional development and skills development. The researcher adapted a Phenomenological research design based on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), to explore the context of the nomadic lifestyle's influence on the long-term skills development approach. The researcher conducted 10 in-depth semi-structured interviews with employees of the food beverages and textile industries of Pakistan. The researcher performed data analysis using NVIVO 14.0 to generate the coding from written transcriptions and based on the coding the themes were generated. The researcher explains the key themes that emerged from the interviews, including the impact on career stability and progression, skill development and adaptability, networking, and relationship building of employees. The other themes include professional identity and expertise, work-life balance, and personal well-being are also affected due to frequent mobility and relocation to other cities and regional offices. The research findings reveal that frequent relocation enhances adaptability, cross-functional and cross-cultural competence, and diverse skill acquisition, it also disrupts career stability and progress. The research results explore valuable insights into the complexities of a nomadic career and provide practical recommendations for organizations and professional development. The research also recommends that to overcome the challenges of low frequent relocation having positive impacts on employee professional development and career growth.  The research is useful for industry and policymakers to analyze the issues of frequent mobility influences on career trajectories professional development and along with employee morale and satisfaction.