Rebranding is experiencing a shortage of labor - Economics - Kommersant
As follows from the statistics of the personnel portal hh.ru, almost half of Russian companies have not changed their strategies for working with their employer brand since the beginning of this year. However, during this period, the shortage of personnel has increased in the Russian labor market, both among highly professional and line specialists, which inevitably requires a rethinking of the company's positioning in the HR field.
Most Russian companies underestimate the potential of their HR brand in a labor market crisis. Such a conclusion can be drawn from the statistics of the personnel portal hh.ru, provided at the request of Kommersant.
As follows from the data collected by hh.ru analysts, since March of this year, almost half of the companies they surveyed (46%) said they had not changed their employer brand strategy in any way. At the same time, during this period, the situation on the Russian labor market has undergone a number of different transformations - a number of foreign companies left, and their production facilities were bought out by Russian enterprises, some specialists moved to other countries due to the aggravation of relations between the Russian Federation and other states, several hundred thousand men of working age left their jobs due to partial mobilization. All these developments have intensified competition for labor for most companies in many sectors of the economy, and we are talking about both highly specialized candidates and line specialists.
Obviously, the strategies for finding new employees and developing existing competencies that have been formulated by employers need to be revised, and indeed, most companies have confirmed that they will look for new ways to fill existing vacancies. So, as previously reported by Kommersant, enterprises plan to cope with the increased shortage by attracting older workers, young job seekers with no experience, as well as hiring women for traditionally “male” jobs. One-fifth of employers intend to lure workers away from competitors by raising wages - so far in industry they have grown this year only slightly more than the average for the labor market (for more details, see "Kommersant" of November 19).
Despite the actual changes in their strategies in the labor market, no more than a third (31%) of the employers surveyed by hh.ru said that they somehow adjusted their plans to promote their HR brand. Moreover, a significant proportion of respondents also reported that they had reduced the number of channels for promoting their employer brand (17%) or froze this work altogether (8%).
At the same time, Nina Osovitskaya, Head of the Center for Consulting and Development of the HR Brand of Clients hh.ru, emphasizes that a strong and professionally developed employer brand, the presence of a clearly formulated EVP (value proposition) based on data, as well as a full-fledged HR communications platform, significantly increase the effectiveness of both attracting new employees and retaining existing ones.
Employer branding can pay off in times of maximum uncertainty, when employees look to their employer for support and candidates tend to pay the most attention to the most diverse aspects of employment in order to decide to move to a new place.
“The intensified competition of Russian companies for talents and young people in 2022 has significantly affected the attention to the employer brand and internal communications. “The same” employee has become even more difficult not only to attract and hire, but also to keep,” agrees Viktor Chukov, head of the marketing and business development service at the Mikhailov and Partners communications company. At the same time, according to him, those companies that understand the importance of promoting the employer brand in the current conditions, in order to meet the ambitions and demands of the most valuable personnel and teams, are ready to rethink or create new approaches to onboarding, loyalty and engagement programs, reformulate outdated values and mission, as well as the role of top management in interaction with teams. “The most advanced employers are seriously exploring game mechanics in HR processes and video communications in the channels of interaction with the team,” he emphasizes.
Thus, right now, in a period of turbulence, companies need to rethink the content of their HR brand, as well as the communication channels they use to connect with job seekers and current employees. How best to do this - to create a new or update an existing employer brand, choose channels for its promotion and get feedback from the audience, you can learn at the training course of the Kommersant publishing house University project called “PR for HR brand. How to tell a job seeker about yourself in the job marketwhich starts on December 8th.
