Employees were released from classes – Newspaper Kommersant No. 155 (7356) of 08/25/2022

The share of Russian organizations that provide their employees with access to corporate education has declined over the past year, according to the results of a survey by the personnel company ANCOR. This is indirectly confirmed by the data of the SuperJob recruiting portal about the growing interest of employees in self-study – perhaps just because of the impossibility of completing it at the expense of the employer. At the same time, for the top employees of corporations, the situation has changed little over the past year: the costs of their education, while optimizing the budgets of companies, turned out to be protected.

According to the ANCOR survey (it was attended by 363 company representatives and 5.3 thousand employees and applicants), over the past year the number of organizations that have their own training programs has decreased by 11 percentage points. If in 2021 85% of respondents declared their presence, now it is 74%. Part of the business has temporarily abandoned training: the share of companies that have “frozen” educational programs is 17%. The majority (64%) of continuing education organizations conduct educational activities as usual, 15% have increased and expanded such programs.

Among the most important skills that companies seek to train employees are effective communication (listed by 72% of respondents), professional knowledge (60%) and leadership (43%). The survey also named such skills as time management (39%), critical thinking (37%), innovativeness (36%), adaptability (33%), stress resistance (31%), ability to work with information (25%) and fast learner (24%).

For employees, as follows from their answers, the prioritization of skills looks somewhat different. Their top 10 includes professional knowledge (70% of respondents), effective communication (63%), stress resistance (53%), ability to work with information (51%), time management (45%), adaptability (39%), quick learner (38%), critical thinking (36%), leadership qualities (34%) and innovativeness (19%).

Yulia Podoksenova, Managing Director of ANCOR Consulting, believes that the differences in prioritization of knowledge and skills among companies and employees “can be called impressive.” “The parties agree only on the importance of professional knowledge and effective communication. At the same time, both specialists and employers put digital skills in last place, despite the digitalization of the economy and the large-scale digitalization of business,” she noted.

Differences in priorities may reflect the fact that, despite the claims of most companies that they have corporate training programs, the proportions of employees who received additional education in the company and external training are comparable (46% and 51%, respectively). Almost a third (31%) attended advanced training courses, and 9% attended courses at universities. The trend towards growing interest in self-study and, probably, the identification of priority areas for gaining knowledge is also confirmed by the data from the SuperJob recruiting portal. According to him, over the year, the proportion of Russians who plan to take professional training, advanced training courses or training seminars not at the expense of the employer has grown by 5 percentage points, to 51% of respondents.

Note that for top managers, the situation with training looks different. According to Kontakt InterSearch Russia, in the majority (55%) of organizations, the budgets for training such employees remained at the same level. “A huge burden has now fallen on the top staff, so companies are increasingly realizing that it is important to support managers in time: to help them diagnose their strong personal characteristics, understand destructors and find techniques for managing them,” says Elena Demyanishnikova, partner of the company.

Anastasia Manuylova