vAccording to the materials of Rostec, 16.12.2014
Letter to the Federal Assembly touched upon an important question of staff training in the domestic industry. Rostec Deputy CEO Nikolay Volobuev during on-air interview with "Radio Rossii" told about how to deal with shortages of highly skilled workers.
ON RESOURCES AND PROSPECTS
Our country is rich indeed: we have a very serious scientific and technical developments but we, as always, implement them very slowly. Therefore, Western countries often leave us behind. I think one of the main reasons is the lack of highly qualified personnel, particularly, in the field of introduction of new developments.
These are primarily engineering specialists and highly skilled workers. The President also pointed out this issue in his message to the Federal Assembly. Rostec State Corporation was established in order to promote the creation of high-tech products.
The previous seven years since the establishment of Rostec we had to evaluate companies that had been transferred to us – many of them needed reconstruction, some were bankrupt or simply ransacked. During these years, we put everything to right, funded almost all companies that were Federal State Unitary Enterprises; applied industry principle to create major holding companies on their basis. Now these companies are working intensively in their respective industries.
But to reach the advanced level of production, to make their products in demand, including in foreign markets, and competitive, we need human resources.
Technological breakthrough requires professionals, in this case the company or an entire industry will reach a new level of competitiveness.
ABOUT COMBINING THEORY AND PRACTICE
We have created basic departments, on the basis of which we carry out retraining. The first is "Management in the field of military and technical cooperation and high technology". MGIMO prepares master’s degree specialists, and we support the department, which is headed by Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov. Our employees graduate MGIMO and other universities, often we prefer specialists with technical education. We prepare specialists for the most acute field in our business.
We have established a department on the basis of Plekhanov Russian University of Economics - Department of Economic Analysis and Corporate Governance in Manufacturing and Exporting High-Tech Products. The department has been running for three years and carries out retraining and advanced training of employees of the corporation. About 200 people have already been trained and retrained. This topic relates to innovative development, and we give people the opportunity to understand how to organize work in this direction. We need people who would not only understand, but also put this direction into practice.
We have basic departments at People's Friendship University of Russia, in Bauman MSTU. We cooperate with many universities in the field of retraining, training of young people who undertake an internship, they come to us to work on our enterprises, in management companies, in holdings and occupy good positions.
Enterprises that create innovative products require the most modern approach to training of their employees. To do this, we need contacts with universities. It is necessary to recreate vocational education system "school-university-manufacture". We lost this system in the 1990s, when most of the graduates chose legal and economic professions, but nobody wanted to be engineers or workers.
ABOUT CROSS-CUTTING BLUE-COLLAR PROFESSIONS
Among the most sought-after professions are now turners, millers, technicians for assembly work. Also there is a shortage of specialists of blue-collar professions.
These are professions that are equally in demand in several industries. For example, a turner who is equally competent in aircraft manufacturing and shipbuilding is able to work in any industry. It is common practice in the world but in Russia, unfortunately, there is a narrowly focused specialization. Positioning each profession as a cross-cutting one with single standards for all enterprises, corporations and companies, we are actually approaching international standards.
Recently, by the way, Yekaterinburg hosted the championship of cross-cutting professions based on WorldSkills standard. (This is an international system. WorldSkills International Movement and International Olympiad in professions among young people has been organized since 1946.) According to team scoring the corporation took the 1st place. I think it will help to develop this kind of working professions and to attract young people.
ON THE PRESTIGE OF ENGINEERING PROFESSIONS
There is a prejudice that workers and engineers are not prestigious occupations. However, I have visited a number of manufactures. For example, the premises of the Ural Optical and Mechanical Plant, which is a part of Shvabe Holding. It is such a "clean" work and such an interesting production process. The working process inspires employees.
Sergey Maksin, CEO of Shvabe Holding, mentioned that the average age of Shvabe's employees is only 39 years old, in some Holding companies the figure is even lower. At an average the competition is 17 people per work place, like in theatrical universities. We are trying to extend this experience as a good example for young people.
In some cases, workers' wages reach 100 thousand rubles. The average salary in the corporation is about 32 thousand rubles but this figure is higher than national average. Anyway, we are trying to create another factors that encourage specialists - the provision of housing, insurance, fulfillment of all social obligations. We try to do everything in an integrated manner, so that even in the current situation benefits package can be truly called a "package".