'Creation of modern, high-quality jobs — in the centre of your attention'

“Whoever passes this turbulence first will win”

Leading Russian automotive companies, manufacturers of agricultural, energy, and other industrial equipment participated in the forum in Kazan. The organisers are the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation and the Federal Centre of Competence in the Field of Labor Productivity (FCC) with the support of the government of the republic.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin greeted the forum participants with a telegram. The head of the state noted how important the work of the people gathered is:

“The focus of your attention is on the implementation of the national project 'Improving labour productivity and employment support', the creation of modern, high-quality jobs, the widespread use of digital technologies and advanced management techniques in key industries. All these are strategic topics of priority importance for the development of the economy, strengthening technological sovereignty, increasing the efficiency and competitiveness of domestic business. This requires close coordination of all levels of government, regions, the business community, academia, and a detailed study of the best practices," Putin said.

The forum was opened by the session “Investing in People: Competencies of New Reality”. The discussion was attended not only by the representatives of Russian businesses, but also by experts in working with human capital. For example, one of the central speakers was Robert Urazov, a native of Kazan, ex-deputy minister of labour of Tatarstan, and now the head of the Russian Agency for Skills and Professions Development, director of the Personnel Potential division of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI).

The meeting was opened with the question “How have recent events affected the work of your companies?". First, a representative of a company engaged in modular construction spoke. Like many domestic enterprises in the face of the upheavals of the previous year, it had to adapt to new realities.

“We have a new reality every year, every time something happens. In fact, we are ready for this. Any events that happen, they give more opportunities than they create problems. Based on the new reality, we have already started working with the Russian Defense Ministry," said Evgeny Skorodumov, the managing director of Avista Module Engineering Group.

The next speaker spoke about the problems faced by the Russian pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, this area, according to her, had suffered already during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We faced with the problem of logistics chains. Plus, the pharmaceutical industry is especially important now, there are a lot of changes in legislation, this applies to both production pharmacies and the work of suppliers in the region. Our company is the only supplier in the Arkhangelsk region, which means that we are the only ones in our region who can supply to hospitals," explained Ekaterina Stashkevich, the head of the Arkhangelsk Pharmacy GUPAO.

Vera Shtokaylo, the deputy director general of the Centre for Industrial Development of the Leningrad Oblast, believes that now it is the time for Russian enterprises to make quick decisions and take prompt measures to respond to new challenges:

“We need to quickly understand what business needs and implement it at the regional level in order to implement it as a support measure. In general, now is the time for ambitious tasks, because the speed of making these decisions has increased.”

However, Robert Urazov did not agree with her. In his opinion, it's time to play a long game. The speaker expressed confidence that indecision in different directions will not lead to anything good:

“I think that the most important change is that the topic of productivity becomes an important topic. This determines the demand for people. And the second important issue is the reliance on one's own strength. Now we understand that there are personnel technologies, productivity, and thinking technologies that are not sovereign in our country. We need to adopt not only someone else's experience, but also create owr own. It is necessary to formulate specific goals and move towards them. Whoever passes this turbulence first will win, and whoever succumbs to it will become flexible and changeable instead of sticking to his line, he will die.

“If your employee is not in optimal condition, then you produce an inefficient product”

Then the experts moved on to the question of how to increase labour productivity at home and make a profit from it. While avoiding large costs.

According to Skorodumov, at his enterprise, each employee has precisely defined his goals and tasks that he performs. According to him, at the meeting, managers monitor the production of the product, evaluate the quality:

“As a result, the possibility of training an employee in certain industries where he lags behind in his indicators is being discussed. For this, we have a corporate university. We also collect best practices, experience that allows a new person not to make mistakes of their previous colleagues. If we see that an employee lacks some skills to produce a certain product, then we discuss what can be done in this case. Maybe sending an employee for training or buying a new machine.”

Ekaterina Stashkevich believes that one common idea helps her to achieve results in her work, which should unite everyone. Therefore, she periodically conducts interviews with employees and asks them the question: “Why do you go to work?"

“This is necessary to update information in the state. If they answer me that they work because they live nearby, then it probably won't be quite right to invest my time and money in such person. But if they tell me that they want to change the work of the company, the medicine of the region, then we need to invest in such person, introduce a bonus system. This is necessary to grow and develop, as well as to change the thinking around you.

According to her, as an employer, she tries to recruit young employees, because a person who is over 50 will not run social networks, make short videos, or create content, respectively, will not attract new customers.

“It's ok if young specialists make mistakes, who hasn't made mistakes in our life? If a person is 30 years old, it does not mean that he is not ready, and he needs to be given the opportunity to prove himself," the speaker concluded.

Robert Urazov suggested separating the concepts of human resources, people, students or staff. As he says, human resources should be called the skills of a person who is used for any production.

“When we work with a person, we work with two things: first, you, as employers, want a person to create something for you, take the maximum from him. Let's be honest, you will be happy if your employee works twice as productive. It's looks like fantastic, but is not. Everyone is wondering how to teach their employee to work more efficiently," he said.

According to him, thanks to the national project “Labour Productivity”, the ability to create separate professions was developed, collecting them from different spheres. In the two years that the national project has been in operation, a technology has appeared that gives the opportunity to measure skills and invest them in various kinds of tools.

“If you have the same person who can do a lot of operations, and it's not difficult to teach this, it's possible and necessary, it means that you get more flexibility, speed and pay fewer people. This has a great effect. When we talk about personnel, it's one thing, but when we talk about a person, it's much more complicated," the expert concluded.