We all know how challenging it is, especially in Russia, to find and keep good professionals. When companies find good staff, firstly, they tend to request salaries, which are much beyond what employers are willing to pay so that employers often end up paying more than they initially were prepared to. Secondly, once employees are finally proficient at their job and are worth their full salary, they start looking for a job they perceive to be more interesting and rewarding. Thus, HR challenges often faced are the lack of good professionals, high salary expectations, and a high turnover of personnel, which is far too high.

This situation is not going to get easier, on the contrary! Why? The answer undoubtedly lies in the Generations Theory as outlined in‘Leadership and Employee Engagement in Russia.’

Generation Y are people born in the 1980s-1990s, who are now challenging Baby Boomers and  are with increasing speed filling key positions held by Generation X.  This is therefore this Generation Y which requires special attention from recruiters.

Russian demographics strongly indicate that the number of 20-24 year old will fall by 50% in the next 10 years, while globally Generation Y will make up 50% of the workforce. The main challenge for Russian companies in near the future will thus be to engage and retain young talented professionals.

This will require flexibility and change as Generation Y expectations and requirements are different from those of Generation X professionals. Generation Y employees focus even more on career advancement and if they feel that there are no professional growth prospects, they tend to move on within 1 to 2 years. This means that companies need to demonstrate a commitment to career development if they want to reduce staff turnover and retain talent.

For example, in Finland, following changes in pension rights many from the Generation X have opted for early retirement. This compelled Finnish companies to change rapidly to compete for young professionals, as well as motivate existing employees to stay on.

Awara has taken into account these developments on the HR market. And based on our extensive experience, we are helping our clients to meet these challenges by offering customized recruitment and training solutions enabling our clients to be successful on this highly competitive and mobile labor market.

For this purpose, Awara has gone into partnership with Eduhouse to set up Awara Eduhouse to offer customized corporate trainings and seminars in Russia. Awara Eduhouse offers its experience and solutions to assist with employee engagement matters, including Generation Y professionals. How do we achieve this? By understanding, acknowledging, and eventually using the forward way of thinking of Generation Y’s professionals.

To do so, it is necessary to:

• Give feedback and encouragement, for example, through mentoring;
• Be flexible about when and where people work;
• Provide constant learning opportunities and career challenges.

Finally, but equally importantly, we must accept that the labor market has fundamentally changed and that higher levels of staff turnover are inevitable. Farsighted companies will therefore build in coping mechanisms to consistently attract the right people and hold on to them longer than their competitors.

Eva Hua, Business Consultant
E-mail: eva.hua@awaragroup.com

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