Supporting apprentices’ autonomy in vocational training: Insights into the practices at the Swiss Postal Service

Abstract

 Satisfying people’s basic psychological needs of relatedness, competence and autonomy plays an important role in human motivation and affects people’s well-being, engagement and performance positively. Companies can contribute to the satisfaction of all three basic psychological needs by establishing autonomy-supportive working conditions, benefitting as a result from associated positive outcomes. Based on an empirical, qualitative exploratory case study, the present article supports the assumption that satisfying the need for autonomy is especially beneficial to the healthy and successful development of young adults throughout their apprenticeship. The findings indicate that various pedagogic measures support the experience of autonomy and also increase work satisfaction and the drive towards workplace learning and collaboration. Such practices include apprentices planning and steering their learning pathways together with their coaches, taking on more comprehensive responsibilities, showing greater initiative in, and ownership of, projects, and actively representing apprentices’ needs in the workplace.