A new study shows that Danes are reluctant to take managerial roles

Employers expressed concern as a new study revealed that Danes are far less interested in being promoted to management positions than employees in other countries.

According to the study carried out by the international employment bureau Randstad - which was reported in daily newspaper Metroxpress, and included results from 25 countries - only four percent of Danish wage earners said they were very focused on promotion, while 68 percent said they were not the least interested in advancement.

This put Denmark on a par with Norway and Sweden as the countries where there was least interest in moving up the management ladder.

Jeroen Tiel, who heads Randstad’s office in Denmark, told Metroxpress that the explanation for this may be that Scandinavians earn higher wages and are more secure in their jobs than elsewhere. ‘This is why they do not feel the same need to be promoted as they do in low-income countries where unemployment is high and the social security net is not as good as in Scandinavia,’ he said.

However, a spokesman from the Confederation of Danish Employers (DA) found the results of the new study extremely worrying.

‘It indicates that we are not risk-takers. Our society cannot advance if we just lean back and enjoy the ride,’ Flemming Dreesen, an employment expert at DA, told Metroxpress. ‘That’s not how they do things in East Asia, so we are going to find it hard to compete with them.’