IBS and Higher School of Economics National Research University revealed personnel barriers on the way of economic development of Russia

The research was carried out in June-November, 2010 in two steps: "room" was directed to the analysis of macroeconomic forecasts of the state and development plans for business, "field" represented poll of 250 top managers and HR directors of the enterprises from TOP-1000 the Russian companies.

First of all, critical mismatch between the growing need of economy for the personnel and negative dynamics of the number of labor resources caused by "demographic hole" of the 1990th years was revealed. This situation is aggravated with two factors:

• mismatch of structure and quality of training of the personnel to requirements of business (employers note insufficient qualification of personnel);
• dominance in many companies of the "manual" approach to personnel management inefficient in terms of employee development, transfer of the accumulated experience to them.

Specialists of IBS and Higher School of Economics National Research University found out that heads are not afraid of influence of a demographic failure on the business – nearly 50% do not expect it absolutely and only 42% expect to some extent. According to the deputy CEO of IBS Dmitry Sadkov: "Such underestimation of a factor of demography demonstrates that even do not think of the largest companies strategically, in scales of the whole country".

"At the same time leaders of business do not want to undertake responsibility for elimination of HR barriers, and shift to the state, – Olga Zelenova, the associate professor of human resources management of Higher School of Economics National Research University confirms. – As measures of overcoming these barriers more than 70% of top managers call activity at the level of the state and local authorities: change of structure of economy and improvement of an education system. Whereas at the level of the company see only need of deduction and training of employees (11%), carrying out competent policy of compensations, motivations (6.6%), profile training (6.6%). Such local vision does not promise to either the companies, or national economy of the optimistic future".

The main personnel problems which the companies should solve in the nearest future according to heads, are aging of personnel, weak inflow of "new blood" (45.5%) and insufficient skill level (41%). The high level of personnel turnover was noted by 29.5% of respondents, and the low level of labor motivation – 16%.

"To solve these problems, it is possible to purchase the personnel in the market, but business as we see from a research, already complains of the overestimated expectations of applicants. Other way – mastering of "industrial" personnel management methods: adjustment of the mechanism of mass involvement of people, creation of the pipeline on transfer of the experience accumulated in the company on the basis of knowledge management systems and other similar tools. And technologies of such line reproduction of professionals should be simple and convenient (electronic testing, package training, etc.)", – Dmitry Sadkov believes.