Metshin on staff: ‘The words of KAMAZ’s CEO about a huge shortage turned out to be prophetic’

If it’s possible to compete for people without high salaries

The problem of the worsening personnel shortage in Kazan was brought up for discussion by deputies of the Kazan City Duma for the first time on 22 November. The entire first half of the session where Tatarstan ministers, State Duma deputies and security officials came to the City Hall was devoted to it. Although number one question on the agenda — on personnel policy — carried many mysterious meanings (up to new appointments), but, in fact, they came close to the sore point — how to attract personnel to municipal service, which does not promise high salaries, as in business structures.

“Unlike business, we cannot compete for people with high salaries. Therefore, we had to develop new approaches,” said head of the Executive Committee Bulat Aleyev in the preface to his speech.

Over the next 40 minutes, he outlined in detail the new approaches to the formation of the personnel policy of the Kazan executive committee.

First of all, he recalled that Vladimir Putin initiated a new national project Personnel” which is aimed at providing the country's economy with professional personnel. Kazan is among the leaders of city ratings, which ensures an advantage in attracting human capital. But it could not avoid a personnel shortage. And it seems that the deficit reached managers in the agencies of municipal authorities, although Bulat Aleyev did not directly say this. The head of the Executive Committee reported that the city authorities changed the strategy for hiring specialists, switching to modern tools.

“The value of a professional team [of the Kazan Executive Committee] increases many times, since the successful future of the city depends on it. Therefore, personnel policy has become one of the key priorities in the work of the mayor's office,” he noted.

“Someone hired people by word of mouth”

The authorities are forced to reform the personnel policy due to a shortage of specialists. Three years ago, more than a quarter of vacancies remained unfilled, and a third of newcomers quit during the first year of work, said Bulat Aleyev. The Executive Committee itself was perceived as an inaccessible caste-based agency for young people, and the image of the municipal service was perceived negatively, he admitted. According to him, newcomers ran away from high bureaucracy, great responsibility and disproportionately low salaries.

“Personnel of the Executive Committee were selected [haphazardly], everyone did what they could: someone hired them by word of mouth, someone used the services of hh.ru or Avito, and someone simply left vacancies unfilled,” the head of the executive committee apparently blurted out in temper.

During the reform, the executive committee began to rely on the best practices of Sberbank, SIBUR and the federal recruiting company hh.ru/ Now the city authorities have established common standards for personnel selection, organized the adaptation of newcomers, and corporate experience has forced them to look at employment through the prism of the client’s path, where each employee is a client who must be supported in his career. Personal pages with vacancies have been launched on employment services. Over three years, 57,000 responses have been received, there is great interest from candidates from two cities and regions.

“Now more than 60% of employees come through recruitment services,” Aleyev said.

According to him, the emphasis is on young people: “If we miss them now, later it will be much more difficult and, frankly speaking, more expensive to pull a specialist out of another sphere, especially business. Working with young people is a key priority of Kazan’s personnel policy.”

Kazan enterprises cannot fill 13,000 vacancies

The labour market of Kazan is still experiencing a shortage of workers at enterprises. Currently, 13,500 vacancies remain open, said head of the Ministry of Labour Elmira Zaripova.

“One out of four vacancies is in the industry. A fitter, engineer, driver are top professions in demand,” she said.

Low wages are the reason for the lack of demand for these vacancies. Thus, an engineer (646 vacancies are open) is offered a salary of 55,200 rubles, and a mechanic (718 vacancies are open) — 51,000 rubles, according to the slides of the Ministry of Labour of the Republic of Tatarstan.

Who is needed in the future? By 2030, another 174,000 workers will be needed in industry. Of these, 60,000 workers with vocational education, and the least — with higher education.

Currently, there is an imbalance in the labour market of Kazan — there is a shortage of working-age men, since in the capital of Tatarstan, women are the majority of the population.

“Kazan has a female face,” noted Elmira Zaripova.

This is the difficulty — an industrial city with chemical and mechanical engineering enterprises cannot attract the required number of workers. In addition, the demographics are going down — by the end of 2024, the birth rate decreased for the first time.

What's next? By 2030, the population will grow in the age categories from 15 to 30 years and from 40 to 50 years, predicts the Ministry of Labour of the Republic of Tatarstan: “It would seem that Kazan will be provided with internal workforce, but from 2030, there will be a sharp decline.”

Kazan Mayor Ilsur Metshin said that Chubais’ followers who destroyed production in the 1990s are to blame for the personnel shortage.

“The words of [Sergey] Kogogin, the general director of KAMAZ, about a huge shortage turned out to be prophetic,” he recalled how this topic was raised at a meeting of the Security Council in the Kazan Kremlin three years ago. In his opinion, the personnel crisis was caused by the loss of social infrastructure.

“The Chubais followers came and said: the market will determine everything, we don't need dormitories, we don't need recreation centres, we don't need pioneer camps, and we don't need the Kazan design bureau. I remember how Mintimer Shaimiyev, when he was president, and Rustam Minnikhanov stood and tried to persuade a federal leader to keep the Kazan design bureau. And he said: “We don't need the bureau, we'll buy Bombardiers, Airbuses, we'll never catch up with them,” the mayor shared.