Shortage of workers with an unclear prognosis

Russian enterprises do not yet complain about the shortage of personnel, although, according to their own estimates, now the share of mobilized among their employees sometimes reaches 10%. However, in the future, the discrepancy between demand and supply of labor may increase: the Ministry of Defense sees the “ceiling” of the share of the called up 30% of the workforce. It is possible that the authorities of the regions, who received new powers, could take the side of employers, but so far, according to Kommersant, they are not doing this.

For a significant number of Russian enterprises, the mobilization did not go unnoticed – although in some cases they lost up to 10% of their employees, follows from an operational survey of the Kontakt InterSearch Russia recruitment agency. The study was conducted in mid-October and involved about 500 companies. In the absolute majority, ordinary employees were called up – the proportion of those who reported the mobilization of the leadership did not exceed 4%. The mobilization has not yet affected the opinion of companies about the shortage of specialists: according to the recruiting company Get experts (more than 1,000 employers took part in the study), over the year the share of those complaining about the shortage of personnel has grown by only 1 percentage point (at the end of 2021, there was a shortage of qualified 66% of employers spoke of specialists, now – 67%). The methods of retaining employees are also stable – the list is dominated by offers of professional (30%) and career (25%) growth, an increase in remuneration (25%), changing the format of work to hybrid or remote (12%), training at the expense of the company (7% ) and revision of the social/compensation package (6%).

In the future, however, the shortage of personnel in the labor market may still grow if the standard presented this week by the Ministry of Defense is implemented. Enterprises, we recall, have already managed to test several strategies to protect their employees from mobilization: someone used the existing norms and determined the lists of recruits in the military registration and enlistment offices, someone tried to apply to the government for reservations for entire industries. In particular, industry associations of pilots and air traffic controllers wrote such letters addressed to the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Defense – however, the answer they received from the defense department only confused the situation. So, in the letter of the Ministry of Defense it is indicated that the department decided to call up no more than 30% of employees at each enterprise – this can be perceived both as a decision to further streamline the call-up process against the backdrop of widespread complaints from business, and as a standard for a separate sector of the economy.

Let us explain: with the current number of employed, the literal application of the “norm” of the Ministry of Defense of 30% of workers allows the dispatch of millions of mobilized to the troops (there are 75 million employed in the Russian Federation in total), which looks completely incomparable with either “partial mobilization” or with the strength of the armed forces. The arbitrary application of such a restriction can put companies in an unequal position, be used for discrimination or in competition. Nevertheless, the departments dealing with related issues – the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Industry and Trade, did not comment on the letter of the Ministry of Defense to Kommersant as the basis for changing the existing booking procedure. It also caused bewilderment among the head of the RSPP, Alexander Shokhin. According to him, the introduction of a single standard for all sectors of the economy is impossible and it is necessary to regulate the process of partial mobilization for each of the existing types of enterprises.

In the absence of a detailed resolution of the issue at the federal level, companies could rely on the authorities of the regions, who on Wednesday received expanded powers to coordinate the resolution of issues related to the military operation in Ukraine in their regions. However, so far, according to Kommersant’s sources in the government of one of them – Crimea, the regional authorities are also not doing this: whom and in what volumes to mobilize from there. This issue, they note, is still in the hands of the military.

Anastasia Manuylova; Alexander Dremlyugin, Simferopol