What shall the Swedish Armed Forces do to retain their soldiers and sailors?

Authors:

  • Malin Ivarsson
  • Maria Hedvall

Publish date: 2013-09-27

Report number: FOI-R--3719--SE

Pages: 36

Written in: Swedish

Keywords:

  • The Swedish Armed Forces
  • retention
  • soldiers and sailors
  • incentives

Abstract

The Swedish Armed Force are experiencing the largest change since the conscript system was introduced; the transformation to an allvolunteer force. The success of the transformation is based on that the Swedish Armed Forces get the personnel needed. This includes not only recruiting but also retaining soldiers and sailors. The research question in this study is therefore what shall the Swedish Armed Forces do to get the sailors and soldiers to fulfill their contracts, both in terms of time and content. We are mainly interested in what incentives, both economical and non-economical, the Swedish Armed Forces can use to get the soldiers and sailors to fulfill the time of contracts and also get them to perform as good as possible. The Swedish Armed Forces have collected information on the sailors and soldiers through both quantitative and qualitative surveys. These surveys show that the strongest internal driving force to fulfill the time of contracts is the possibility to continue within the Swedish Armed Forces. This indicates that the problem with breach of contracts may be due to the risk of unemployment after the contract has expired. The solution to this problem can be that the Swedish Armed Forces create possibilities for sailors and soldiers to get other employments after the contracts have been fulfilled. However, it is probably necessary with many coordinating incentives to get the sailors or soldier to fulfill the contracts. These incentives should also be coordinated with the incentive to perform as good as possible when employed, in order for the Swedish Armed Forces to reach its goals.