42% of enterprises in the Russian Federation would like to increase the number of their employees, but salaries are indexed only by inflation

According to research B1, in 2023, 42% of enterprises in the Russian Federation would like to increase the number of their employees – by an average of 13%. At the same time, some of them, especially in the industrial sector, complain about difficulties in recruiting qualified employees – filling a vacancy can take up to four months. However, they do not yet plan to make jobs more attractive by increasing salaries: in 2022, the majority indexed salaries to the inflation rate; this year the planned increase will be slightly higher.

More than a third of companies in the Russian Federation plan to increase the number of their personnel this year. At the same time, even taking into account the difficulties in selecting the necessary personnel, they are not yet ready to massively increase salaries. This conclusion can be drawn from the latest issue of the annual “General Industrial Review of Wages and Compensations” for 2023, which was prepared by company B1. This year, 223 Russian and international companies took part in the survey, providing data on more than 1 thousand enterprises.

In 2023, 42% of companies plan to increase their workforce – the average percentage of planned employee growth is 13%. 9% are preparing for layoffs (within 9% of the current number), the rest are not yet planning personnel changes. The data is consistent with estimates from the September review of the Central Bank, which recorded a frontal deterioration in assessments of the provision of Russian companies with workers in all industries to a minimum since 2020. Most often, representatives of industrial and agricultural enterprises report a shortage of personnel, least of all – companies from the trade and service sectors (for more details, see “Kommersant” on October 23).

According to the Huntflow recruitment automation system, recruiters consider engineers with different specializations to be the most competitive vacancies in the manufacturing sector – the average time to fill such vacancies is up to 120 days, during which companies manage to review over 100 candidates. Drill and blast engineers were also cited by recruiters as highly competitive jobs in the mining industry. The average time to fill such vacancies is now 60 days and also requires interviews of several dozen candidates.

At the same time, although the majority of companies (85%) changed the salaries of their staff at the end of 2022, the average percentage of revision did not exceed 11% of the current rate. The average indexation percentage excluding individual salary revisions was even lower and amounted to 8%. The percentage change in salary levels in the case of applying an individual approach ranged from 13% to 26%. The inflation rate at the end of last year, according to Rosstat, was 12%. In 2023, 83% of companies plan to carry out a review; the average percentage of changes in payroll for review purposes is 10%. According to the forecast of the Ministry of Economy, the increase in inflation at the end of the year will be 7.5%. Similar assessments of salary revision plans were previously given by the Market Research Laboratory of the Economic Policy Institute. According to their estimates, light industry, chemical industry and mechanical engineering enterprises plan to increase salaries in the range of 15–20%.

As follows from survey B1, the majority of companies named maintaining competitive salary levels and increasing employee loyalty as the key priorities of the HR department for the next 12 months (89% and 78% of companies, respectively). As a tool for achieving the goals of the HR function, 83% of companies noted an increase in remuneration, the next most popular are the introduction of new methods of non-material motivation (54%) and the expansion of the package of benefits, social bonuses and payments (41%).

Anastasia Manuilova