December 20, 2019, 02:01 / Vedomosti&

Personnel for the new economy

What specialists are missing in Russia and how to learn to teach them Olga Volkova WorldSkills

A paradoxical situation has developed in the Russian labor market: with a general reduction in the number of jobs in agriculture and industry, enterprises continue to experience a labor shortage because the requirements for employee qualifications have increased. To correct the imbalance in Russia, it is necessary to increase the prestige of blue-collar professions, make the operating principles of universities and vocational education institutions more modern and flexible, and more actively involve business representatives in educational programs.

Since the early 2000s, the Russian labor market has changed significantly: firstly, the professional qualifications of the workforce and white-collar employment have increased, and secondly, there has been an outflow of labor from the primary (agriculture, fishing) and secondary (manufacturing, construction) sectors economy into the service sector, note the authors of the HSE review published in 2018, “The vocational education system: how to learn to hear signals from the labor market?” They provide the following data: the number of managers increased by 2.2 times, highly qualified specialists - by almost 1.5 times, service sector workers - by 36.2%, mid-level specialists - by 12%. At the same time, the number of less qualified groups either did not change or decreased. As a result, 62% of work activity by the end of this period of time falls on the share of representatives of white-collar (office workers and the service sector) and only 38% - blue-collar (blue collar) professions. Agriculture and manufacturing industries lost the most workers – one-third and one-fifth, respectively.

The structure of graduation from educational institutions has also changed: in agriculture, for example, it fell by 2 times, and in the service sector, trade and public catering it increased. But the imbalance between supply and demand in the labor market could not be completely eliminated: this was caused both by the practice of planning recruitment targets inherited from the Soviet system, and by false signals from companies - when ineffective enterprises that were simply unable to pay reported a “shortage of employees” workers a decent salary.

Where there are not enough workers

The Russian labor market adapts quite flexibly to changes in the economic environment and employment structure, says Fedor Dudyrev, director of the Center for Skills Development and Vocational Education at the Institute of Education of the National Research University Higher School of Economics: over the past 20 years, unemployment in Russia has never exceeded 6% and even the financial crisis of 2008 did not cause a significant increase in the number of unemployed. This, however, does not change the fact that, while remaining employed, workers in many sectors of the Russian economy do not receive decent remuneration for their work, he notes.

The economy is redistributing workers from the industrial sector to the post-industrial sector - services of various kinds, from hotel and cooking to financial and banking services. The demand for specialists in IT, creative industries, tourism business and various service industries is growing steadily throughout the world, the expert summarizes. There is an acute shortage in the field of data science - we are talking about people who analyze big data and artificial intelligence, adds Irina Svyatitskaya, head of the youth department at HH.ru. “The demand for them will grow, because almost all large companies are already using it and will use it in the future,” she notes.

At the same time, industrial enterprises continue to consistently experience a shortage of workers with the required level of qualifications. As a study by the Center for Monitoring Industrial Development (CMDP), which involved 500 enterprise managers, showed, the main personnel problems they face are the shortage of highly qualified workers and engineers (they were mentioned by 51 and 42% of respondents, respectively) and mid-level specialists: craftsmen sections, technologists, foremen (30%). Only a fifth of respondents reported no problems with staff formation.

At the same time, a fifth of all enterprises plan to increase the number of highly qualified workers, and 43% - engineers. Blue-collar professions are unpopular, notes Svyatitskaya: “This is also due to their representation in the media. Name at least one film in recent years where the main character is a worker. People are not so actively going there to study, and production is faced with the fact that workers with different qualifications are needed, and competition in the labor market for workers is minimal.”

/ Evgeny Razumny / Vedomosti

On the other hand, according to industrial enterprises, half of the graduates of secondary vocational education organizations “receive an extremely low level of qualifications” or “are absolutely not ready to work in a real enterprise,” according to data from the Center for Economic Development and Trade. Another almost 40% of respondents believe that graduates have a good theoretical basis, but they are poorly prepared for practical work. Business managers do not have the best opinion about universities - 37% of them believe that students are not given good theoretical knowledge, and 52% note a lack of preparation for practical work.

Personnel plan

One solution is to review the enrollment planning system in secondary vocational education organizations. Previously, the regions resolved these issues independently; since 2016, the “Regional Standard for Staffing for Industrial Growth”, developed by the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, has been implemented - a model that should include cooperation with business in the vocational education system and take into account regional macro-indicators, such as, for example, population decline, migration, current and forecast employment levels. In the coming years, this system should be implemented in all constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

The greatest difficulties in forecasting personnel needs arise in those regions where long-term investment projects are not being implemented, explains Dudyrev. Where the ministries of economics formulate investment programs, the personnel requirements of the regional economy acquire certainty, and under these conditions the standard is launched quite easily. Dudyrev cites Tatarstan as an example: there, according to him, a model has been built over many years in which three republican ministries - economics, labor and education - jointly analyze the personnel needs of the republic's economy not only in the sectoral context, but also in the context of municipalities, and then, on this basis, plans for admission to secondary vocational education organizations are formed.

The Federal Ministry of Education is also acting: in 2019, it submitted for public discussion a draft order on revising the list of areas of training in vocational education - it is planned to stop training in a number of specialties of secondary vocational education from 2021, such as, for example, auto mechanic, finishing construction foreman works, mechanic. The head of the Ministry of Education, Olga Vasilyeva, noted that in total the list will be reduced by almost 100 professions that are “outdated in content,” “disappearing,” or “have changed so that the necessary skills can be obtained through short-term courses.” They should be replaced by training programs for specialists from the list of the top 50 promising professions and specialties approved by the Ministry of Labor back in 2015. “Those programs that are no longer in demand in the labor market have disappeared from the list of educational programs. When determining their list, the federal department took into account the current situation - only those specialties that were not recruited for in the last three years were reduced,” Dudyrev emphasized.

Attract business

Since 2007, employers’ associations have also had the right to participate in the restructuring of the vocational education system (development of standards and training areas) through the National Qualifications System. In particular, at the end of 2018, 1,318 professional standards were approved, 77 of them were updated during the year, 26 at the initiative of business, Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Protection Lyubov Yeltsova told participants of the IV All-Russian Forum “National Qualifications System of Russia”. Based on these standards, universities and colleges adjust the content of their own educational programs.

In 2017, the Federal Law “On Independent Qualification Assessment” came into force, which gave employers the right to conduct assessment of graduates’ qualifications, independent of educational institutions, through a system of qualification assessment centers - such a center, for example, was created by the Rosatom State Corporation .

In fact, this is a kind of analogue of the Unified State Exam in the secondary vocational education market. In the first two years of the law, 22,000 people went through the procedure, 95% confirmed their qualifications, Eltsova cited figures.

Finally, employers can evaluate educational programs for compliance with professional standards and labor market requirements, and from 2015 to 2017, more than 100 higher and secondary vocational educational institutions received such accreditation.

World class skills

As part of the federal project “Young Professionals” with a total value of more than 156 billion rubles. (part of the national project “Education”) it is planned to update the infrastructure of colleges in all regions, and by 2024 to equip more than 5,000 workshops according to modern standards, including WorldSkills standards.

Russia joined the international WorldSkills movement in 2012. Five years later, regional championships “Young Professionals” (WorldSkills Russia) were already held in all 85 constituent entities of the Russian Federation, and students from 2,000 secondary vocational education organizations participated in them, according to a review by the Higher School of Economics.

The international movement WorldSkills aims to popularize professionalism and work excellence, says Svyatitskaya, including holding competitions and cooperation with training sites, such as the Moscow Technopark.

WorldSkills International organizes international championships of professional skills, Russia not only successfully participates in them, but also strives to transfer this methodology to the vocational education system, says Dudyrev.

/ WorldSkills Russia

What should universities do?

In higher educational institutions, training differs from training in secondary vocational education. Nevertheless, WorldSkills works there too - for example, professional skills championships are held for young specialists in the field of IT and agro-industrial technologies, and 38 universities conducted a demonstration exam according to their standard in 2018.

Some universities strive to work with companies directly, for example by opening basic departments, recalls Sergei Solntsev, deputy head of the labor market research laboratory at the Higher School of Economics. Since 2018, Russia has been developing targeted training programs on the principle of “one university to meet the needs of several enterprises” - such programs were launched at the Tyumen Industrial University (TIU), Ufa State Petroleum Technical University, Far Eastern Federal University and Ural Federal University. For example, TIU has basic departments for Gazprom and Lukoil, and it conducts targeted training of specialists for Sibur, Rosneft and Novatek.

The education system is characterized by rather high inertia, Solntsev admits, changing it requires a lot of time and effort. In the world, this problem is being solved through the involvement of employers in the formation of educational standards and programs, as well as through the development of online education, which can complement education in universities, since it is more flexible and less regulated, he says.

Another mechanism for adapting education to changing market demands is programs that students can customize for themselves by choosing individual courses, as is done in the USA, Solntsev notes. In Russia, a similar system was implemented by the Higher School of Economics and the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.

Corporate responsibility

Pavel Travkin, a researcher at the Labor Market Research Laboratory at the Higher School of Economics, reminds that one of the key indicators in the labor market is wages, and often when enterprises declare a shortage of personnel, this only means that they are not ready to pay employees a salary that would corresponded to their qualifications. The same applies, in his opinion, to the supposed shortage of personnel in the IT sector: in fact, the shortage is felt so strongly because Russian employers are also forced to compete in this market with foreign companies (since the profession makes it easy to switch to remote work or move to another region) and many companies simply cannot afford good specialists.

There are also truly unique professions and specialties: for example, an aircraft design bureau needs a worker who turns specific parts, the expert gives an example. Typically, the education system does not prepare such specialists at all; this requires investment from the employer. Only large companies with a staff of more than ten thousand people can afford such investments, notes Travkin: they create corporate universities (Nornickel has one, for example) or cooperate with universities, opening their own departments, such as Yandex , SAS or Gazprom .

/ Yandex Academy

“We have a shortage of young people due to the demographic decline, and enterprises understand that if they do not develop technologies for training and increasing labor productivity, they physically will not be able to replace these workers, so we need to invest in both training people and more modern equipment, which is less dependent on the number of personnel,” says the expert.

Small businesses often don't think in such long-term terms, says Travkin.

“Russia is characterized by a low proportion of training enterprises (less than a third of enterprises train staff) and a low proportion of personnel at an enterprise that undergo training (less than half),” writes Irina Denisova, a professor at the Russian Economic School, in her book “The Future of the Russian Economy.” – At the same time, labor turnover (movement between different jobs) in Russia is high. Thus, in Russia, as a rule, they strive to find a suitable worker on the labor market.” Enterprises are switching to training existing employees as the cost of finding and hiring new ones rises, she notes.

According to the CMRP survey, the majority of employers, to one degree or another, are still ready to take part in the training of employees: 90% of respondents agree to provide internships for students, almost half agree to provide their specialists for practical training in educational institutions, almost a fifth are ready to invest in improving the material and technical base of these organizations.

Eternal students

There are also professions that will soon not only change, but practically disappear.

“Most likely, in a few decades, the profession of a call center operator will change greatly, and these will be people working with some premium goods. Already, mostly various answering machines are calling,” Svyatitskaya gives an example. It's a matter of time and technology, she emphasizes.

The problem will affect workers of different qualifications. “It is impossible to teach a person once for the rest of his life,” says Travkin. – Even if you give him an excellent higher education, he will receive it at 22 years old, and he will have 40 years of working life. During this time, technologies will change in such a way that without constant updating of knowledge and skills, nothing will remain from his education.” As an example, he cites the accounting profession, which has changed significantly only in the last 10–15 years. "What to do? Constantly learning, developing a system of continuous education throughout life - government agencies, universities, and private companies are actively trying to enter this field. Both employers and employees themselves need to invest in this: if they understand that their profession is beginning to die out, then they need to retrain and not expect it to be supported from the outside,” he argues.

True, both employees and candidates often live with somewhat outdated ideas about what knowledge, skills and competencies are in demand today, how careers are built in the modern world, and are not ready to adapt to the realities of today, adds Galina Podovzhnaya, HR Director of the company “ 3M in Russia and the CIS."

Private companies are really focusing on the opportunities that new trends in the labor market open up for them. For example, the Severgroup company owned by Alexey Mordashov created a division called Severgroup TalentTech, within which it collects projects related to education, HR and technologies for freelancing. Among them are the online training platform “Netology”, the aggregator of construction and repair orders and services “Remontnik.ru”, the online freelance exchange FL.ru, etc.

The solution implemented by Severgroup TalentTech should help people answer the question of what to do when their profession is under threat, Andrei Mityukov, vice president of Severgroup, explained to Vedomosti. “Already now everything is moving towards the fact that people will learn to print on 3D printers at home. And through “Repairman” a person can move into the service sector and support what has already been built or master a new specialty in “Netology”. And if before you just did the wiring in the house, now you can program a smart home,” he gave an example.

The state is also ready to engage in retraining: within the framework of the national project “Education”, the federal project “New Opportunities for Everyone” is envisaged with a funding volume of 9.2 billion rubles. until 2024. It contains mechanisms for the development of lifelong education, support for retraining, and increased professional mobility.