/ RBCC Services / Events

RBCC St. Petersburg HR Forum,
May 25th 2006, Grand Hotel Europe

On May 25th, RBCC St. Petersburg held a business seminar on one of the topics most excercising the minds of investors in Russia at the moment. Any organisation is only as good as the people working within it, and the fact is that Russia is, for many reasons, critically short of qualified managers and specialists. In a country so abundant in mineral wealth, companies wanting to hire new staff are trying to sift the tiniest amount of gold from a stream which is showing no sign of turning into a torrent. As the higher education system struggles to adapt to the changing needs of an ever-expanding market, how can companies make sure that they find the pure gold they are looking for, and how can they make sure they keep their precious metal once they have it?
Human Resources is a subject as broad as it is deep, and has been covered in previous issues of the RBCC Bulletin (most recently in March 2005). Under the umbrella-term "HR" are such topics as recruitment and selection, the retention and development of key personnel, identifying the "star" employees who merit further training and promotion, and of course maintaining a motivated and loyal workforce. Speaking at the HR Forum were a panel of leading specialists who addressed many of these topics.
First to speak was Marina Rapoport, Business Development Director at Boyden in St. Petersburg. Marina delivered a detailed and precise overview of the way that the recruitment sector is developing in Russia at the moment. Key points were, as would be expected, an increasingly competitive recruitment marketplace, particularly in the financial, retail, manufacturing and professional services fields, and more "mobility" of key specialists between these sectors, with a concomitant need for companies to hire from abroad. These and other factors mean that the jobs market has become very much the domain of the seller - good news for qualified personnel, especially at the senior director level where Boyden operate, but of course not so good for employers. It is one thing, of course, to find the right people for your organisation, but equally important to retain the staff you have, especially those employees with the most potential, and therefore the most allure for your competitors.
Anna Sagaida, Director of THI Selection in St. Petersburg, addressed this area in particular during her presentation, and went over some of the many things that employers should think about if they want to hold onto their “stars”. A notable tendency in the Russian employment marketplace now is the increasing importance of a positive and employee-friendly corporate culture – and with human resources becoming so scarce, the ability to retain good managers is becoming a key competitive advantage. Also of growing importance is the "brand" of the company for which you work - perhaps because people are thinking more and more about how their CV looks in the future. Furthermore, aside from the non-material factors, a recent survey conducted by THI showed that while salary expectations had increased by 30-40% over the past couple of years, real salary increases within companies are barely keeping pace with inflation - hence the increased mobility of the workforce.
But how does an employer measure the performance of his or her colleagues? Is there any kind of benchmark system that can be used to assess the standards of work rate and professionalism displayed by workers in an organisation? Such a system has existed for some time, in the UK it is called the NOS (National Occupational Standards) system. Vladimir Pletenev, of the Open Business School, took time to focus on the main areas which mark out a good employee under this system: the ability to put one's abilities to the best effect, effective management, coping with change, people skills, prudent use of resources, and - above all - delivering results. The danger, of course, with any standardized system is that one size will never fit all – NOS and systems like it best served as a basis for companies to better structure personnel development and performance targets. Aside from the use of defined standards to measure employee performance, new technologies in the sphere of personnel management also allow HR-managers to automate some areas of their work.
Alexander Kosobokov, Client Services Manager at Epicor Scala in St. Petersburg examined this topic in his presentation. The same caveats apply to automation as they do to the implementation of universal standards – it is important that any automated system be tailor-made for the organisation. Alexander made the point that personnel management is not a single, monolithic process, but rather a complex series of interconnected sub-processes – training, development, incentivisation, promotion, workload management etc. If used carefully, though, an automated system could lead to far more efficient use of any organisation's workforce.
Technology can also assist companies in the initial hiring of reliable employees. No matter how carefully a candidate is selected, any new addition to the workforce brings with it an element of risk – at least the risk of the unknown. Anyone attending an interview will inevitably want to describe their working history in the best possible light, but how can an employer be sure exactly how much is being concealed? Securicop Okhrana have developed an automated testing programme which puts a predetermined set of questions to the candidate, and analyses voice-stress patterns which may indicate what we might like to call “economy with the truth”. The company's Chairman, Andrey Grigoriev, gave an entertaining demonstration of the system – again, it was stressed that such methods could only ever be effective if they were part of a wider system of assessment, especially as stress-levels at interviews are high in any case, thus potentially giving misleading results.
Moving from technology to psychology, Anna Gurevich, General Director of Knowledge and Skills, addressed the subject of how best to inspire loyalty in a work force, through motivation and training. Equally important for employers who want to hold on to their staff and keep their organisations running efficiently is to spot the signs of demotivation early, and nip them in the bud. After all, it only takes one demotivated worker in an open office to reduce the efficiency of an entire department. Anna put together a “not to do” list for employers who want to retain staff loyalty, the main thread of which was perhaps the obvious one: the human factor, and a need to make people feel valued, that their ideas, abilities and skills are being appreciated by their colleagues. Which of course takes us back to the point made by THI: it is the non-material factors (working culture, management attitude) that are now coming to the fore in terms of where people want to work, and for whom. The employers sitting on the river bank, sifting what gold they can from the stream, have to keep this thought close, or they may find that the gold they find will end up with one of their rivals.
The RBCC would like to thank once again all the presenters, and those who attended the event. Special thanks also to THI and Personnel Mix magazine for marketing support, and to the seminar sponsors, Epicor Scala, Securicop Okhrana and Language Studio for so generously supporting the Chamber's work in St. Petersburg.
Chris Gilbert, RBCC St. Petersburg Director