Page 48 - Журнал Sozvezdye Review - «СОЗВЕЗДИЕ» #42

Объемы подготовки
молодых специалистов не
позволяют удовлетворить
растущий спрос со стороны
работодателей, особенно
с учетом отрицательной
демографической динамики и
of them? The likely answer is yes, but first things first: оттока кадров из региона
the personnel shortage needs to be dealt with as quickly This, however, is too few to meet
as possible. It is obvious that the problem can’t be solved
through the efforts of businesses alone. There should be the growing demand from the
strong coordination on the side of schools and public employers, especially given the
bodies, and it is in place in the Arkhangelsk Oblast, in- negative demographic trends and
spiring hope that the industry will stay competitive and
will receive new impetus. the outflow of personnel

Alexander Saburov, NArFU Institute for Arctic
Development Strategy, Director: Another big advantage available from the USC’s
NArFU Institute for Arctic Development Strate- Severodvinsk-based members is the “yard-school”
gy started to deal with shipyards’ staffing challenges training scheme, first stated in the Soviet time. With
in 2022. According to our initial employer surveys, this scheme, exposure to the workplace starts for stu-
the current level of personnel shortage in shipbuild- dents of the NArFU Severodvinsk Campus as early
ing and ship repair industries can be described as as Year 1. As we were told by the executives of some
moderate. While none of the surveyed employers re- non-member enterprises, their chances of winning
ferred to their staffing shortage as critical, there’s no the graduates of NArFU Severodvinsk Campus are
denying there’s a deficit out there that affects perfor- slim, for the majority get hired by the member com-
mance, causing the employers to take action. panies soon after admission.
The reasons contributing to this situation are The USC member companies’ cooperation with
multiple, the primary one being the low popu- Severodvinsk-based schools isn’t limited solely to
larity of engineering majors among Russian high training. They host career guidance events and the
school students. There are less applicants with preparatory courses for the Unified State Exam in
high Unified State Exam score in Physics, Math- Math, Physics and Computer Science.
ematics and Computer Science than there are gov- Besides, schools benefit from larger companies
ernment-funded places at universities; employers by having them as sponsors in the purchase of new
seem to be dissatisfied with the poor level of train- equipment and upgrade of technical facilities. This
ing being received at schools in these subjects and is an extremely important point, since, as we heard
in drawing. from some of the employers, there have been cases
Besides, many students, attracted by the opportu- of fresh graduates being unable to operate modern
nities available in bigger cities, choose to leave their welding technologies because those used by them
home town, while those contracted to study here in at school date back to the 1960s.
Arkhangelsk – for example, from Saint Petersburg As to smaller companies, they often find themselves
and its State Marine Engineering University, LETI, with little or zero human and financial resources to co-
ITMO, and Polytech – fail to complete their studies operate with schools. Therefore, it is essential that em-
and terminate their contracts early. ployers, schools and public authorities team up for more
The competition for workers is high in Arkhan- effective monitoring of the SME’s medium- and long-
gelsk Oblast, not only among employers but also term staffing needs, as well as to encourage high school
with the other regions – Saint Petersburg, Len- students to pursue careers in shipbuilding, upgrade the
ingrad Oblast, Murmansk, Kaliningrad, Primor- quality of training, especially in math and physics, and
ye Territory. Cases are known of entire teams be- better meet vocational schools’ and universities’ need
ing lost to poaching. Nearly half of the employers in material and technical resources.
claim they are forced to source manpower else-
Igor Skubenko, Deputy Chairman of the Arkhan-
SOZVEZDYE #42 where after failing to hire from the local labor gelsk Government:
market.
This is also the reason why employers are so focused As of today, for every 100 residents of Arkhan-
кадры on retraining their teams, or providing them with ad- gelsk Oblast there are 135 job vacancies. This imbal-
ance holds also in terms of skill grade and place of
vanced training opportunities, using their own resourc-
staff es or through cooperation with vocational schools and residence. The workforce is ageing: the number of
universities. One example is the largest members of the workers under forty has reduced over the last five
United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) that are based years from 50.7% to 46.2%.
in Severodvinsk. In pursuit of manpower, they have es- The problem of staff outflow still stays. According
tablished partnership relations with the schools all over to Rosstat, in 2022 the industry lost 5,000 workers –
46 Russia and are seeking to team up with more as student they left Arkhangelsk Oblast for the jobs in other
parts of Russia – whereas the number of those hired
sponsors, as local schools including NArFU fail to meet
their staffing needs. from the other regions does not exceed 2,000.