The authorities will focus on increasing the productivity of priority industries

The national project to increase labor productivity until 2030 can reduce 10% of the personnel shortage in the country through optimization and automation of production processes. The Ministry of Economy plans to expand and subordinate the national project to the tasks of innovative development and import substitution through the opening of industry competence centers that would improve efficiency in specific industries—tourism could become a pilot. The national project will also affect companies working for technological sovereignty, from introducing lean manufacturing to supporting marketing and logistics.

Ways of economic development with a shortage of personnel in addition to VTB investment forum Yesterday we discussed “Labor Productivity and Mentoring Day” at the forum. As the head of the Ministry of Economy, Maxim Reshetnikov, said there, the national project to increase labor productivity over six years has reduced the economy’s need for personnel by 100 thousand people and, according to the department’s calculations, if it is extended in the current design, it will reduce the personnel shortage in the country by more than 10% by 2030 year.

Productivity growth is achieved through lean manufacturing practices and process optimization—federal and regional competence centers help companies with this. 5.5 thousand companies (1.5 million workers) in the manufacturing industry, agriculture, construction, transport and trade have already become participants in the national project. The profit of 4.5 thousand enterprises where projects were completed increased by 318 billion rubles – almost ten times more than the budget of the entire national project (32 billion rubles until 2024), said Maxim Reshetnikov. The ministry plans to expand the national project, focusing on priority sectors of the economy and creating industry-specific competence centers, the first in tourism regulated by the Ministry of Economy. A system of comprehensive support for projects in industries and industries that are important for strengthening “technological sovereignty” (replacing developed countries’ technologies that are inaccessible after the aggravation of relations due to the military operation in Ukraine with their own or “friendly”) is also being developed. It is assumed that the list will be determined by industry regulators, and at the selected enterprises all elements of the national project will be implemented at once – lean production, marketing tools, logistics, digitalization, professional standards. There was also talk about scaling the national project to new areas – however, back in 2022, the curator of the national project, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov, supported its expansion to companies in healthcare, tourism, health resorts and housing and communal services (see Kommersant on October 19, 2022 ).

At the same time, the Ministry of Economy itself does not relieve enterprises of responsibility for the state of the labor market and calls on participants in the national project to more actively link personnel training in colleges and universities with the needs of employers. Mr. Reshetnikov also recalled unproductive employment caused by excessive requirements and innovations in industries that could be automated without them – he cited accounting and security as an example.

Let us note that productivity is becoming a problem for the entire scarce labor market against the backdrop of increasing wages for employees in order to retain them or compete with other employers – for example, according to a recent survey by the personnel company UTEAM, 83% of Russian companies complain about a shortage of personnel and 74% are trying to solve the problem by increasing salaries. However, as the HSE previously found out, this does not affect labor productivity (see Kommersant, October 19). Therefore, notes Irina Antonenko, head of the recruitment department of the HR company UTEAM, more and more employers are introducing other ways to make working in their company more attractive – for example, internal training and mentoring (62%), recruiting staff from students and graduates (59%), retention employees with long-term motivation programs for ordinary positions (47%), flexible hours and remote work (43%).

Diana Galieva, Anastasia Manuilova