Lack of personnel contributes to their training – Kommersant

In 2023, against the background of a shortage of personnel, Russian companies are forced to actively invest in the training of their employees, it follows from the data of recruiting and consulting companies. The priority is to train personnel in digital skills, first of all, we are talking about working with new technologies (including neural networks) and the basics of cybersecurity. This practice is fully consistent with the global trend towards the digitalization of personnel and, at the same time, in the Russian context, is part of the strategy for retaining and attracting employees.

Russian companies continue to invest in the education of their employees even amid the current difficulties in the economy, and one of the priorities is the development of digital skills among employees. According to the results of the study, experts from the Get experts recruiting company and the Future Hub platform came to this conclusion. Nearly 2,000 people took part in their survey, including company executives and senior and mid-level specialists.

Only 5% of the companies surveyed reported that they did not train their employees. Representatives of other organizations named “long” courses and webinars with homework (55%), workshops and intensives (also 55%) as the most effective learning formats. In third place in popularity were strategic sessions (51% of respondents), offline learning (47%) and microlearning (41%). There are noticeably fewer supporters of independent learning through books, blogs and webinars (28%) and formats such as mentoring, on-the-job training, practice-oriented learning, etc. (3%). It should be noted that the employees themselves, for the most part, also supported online forms of training (65%).

The top 10 skills that employers would like to see in their employees are learning (88%), adaptability (88%), critical thinking (80%), mindfulness and self-awareness (66%), creativity (65%), resilience (47%), sympathy and empathy (45%), self-confidence (42%), humanity (37%), flair and ingenuity (29%).

However, with such a set of human virtues, employers still named the need to develop digital skills among employees as a priority – first of all, we are talking about the ability to use modern technologies in work (62%). In second place is the ability to use neural networks (50%), in third place are cybersecurity skills (42%). At the same time, if 55% of employees demonstrated compliance with the requirements for knowledge of technologies, then the proportions of those who know the basics of cyber defense and who know how to use neural networks turned out to be very low (12% and 10%, respectively).

Natalya Shumkova, Deputy Director of the Higher School of Business at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, notes that, according to available data, companies’ spending on staff training is stable. “Regarding digital skills, the requirements of companies have remained the same – you need to know and apply digital technologies in your professional field, but now many organizations are facing the goal of clarifying and updating the pool of their technology partners,” the expert says.

“If in 2022 budgets for corporate training were reduced (as happens in times of crisis), then in 2023 we see the return of major players in the Russian market to employee training,” confirms Roman Tyshkovsky, managing partner of the Odgers Berndtson Russia agency. According to him, risk management, teamwork and the development of critical thinking have become priority areas in employee training.

It should be noted that the intention of companies to spend money on training can be explained by the high level of competition for employees in the Russian labor market. With low unemployment, they are forced to retain existing and attract new employees with the help of, among other things, “social packages”, of which educational programs are a part. Large corporations can spend up to 1.2% of the payroll fund on corporate training (for more details, see Kommersant dated November 30, 2022).

In addition, the demand for digital skills training is in line with global labor market trends. As Kommersant previously wrote, World Economic Forum experts believe that in the next five years, digitalization will become the main driver for the development of many types of businesses and will require either retraining existing specialists or entering the labor market for new ones (for more details, see Kommersant dated May 4) .

Anastasia Manuylova