Competence and career development

The main responsibility for the development of our own competence rests with ourselves, and everyone should evaluate their own competencies with respect to the changing needs of working life. The supervisor's role is to steer your competence according to business needs, and a personal development plan is established annually for every employee in conjunction with the performance and development review.

We offer different models for career planning and support your development in many ways. At K Group, competence development goes beyond participation in training. Our rule of thumb is that most (70%) of the learning takes place by learning on the job, 20% by learning from others and 10% through conventional training. You may utilise our entire competence development offering when preparing your personal development plan.

From career path to career map

Professional careers no longer advance on a single straight line based on systematic advancement to increasingly demanding tasks. Instead, working people of today experience a lot of lateral movement in the course of their careers. This is why we prefer to talk about career maps over career paths. Career maps involve accumulating competence in various jobs in different operations, providing every employee with a roadmap for moving ahead purposefully in their career.

K Group employees have conventionally had long careers with us, and we want to support our employees in building diversified careers within the group. In 2018, altogether 3,930 persons changed jobs internally within the group in Finland.
Work and professional careers are facing major changes: jobs are changing, some of them disappearing and new ones emerging at a faster pace than before, and acquired competence also becomes outdated at an ever increasing pace. Therefore, the ability and the motivation to learn new things will become increasingly important alongside accumulating experience.

"It's important to have a positive spirit of getting things done, but it's also important to question old ways of doing things. Our operating environment is going through total transformation, and we have to keep up with the changes.", Matti Mettälä, Senior Vice President, Human Resources

Extensive training provision

We offer the personnel of Kesko and K-stores vocational training through coachings and e-learning as well as the opportunity to obtain vocational qualifications. Development of supervisors' competence has a strong presence in the training provision. All training courses for store staff can be found on one e-learning portal, www.k-academy.fi/.