Many agricultural producers have faced a shortage of unskilled labor this year. The problem was a consequence of the pandemic: a significant part of labor migrants left Russia.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, before the start of the pandemic in the Russian Federation, there were about 2 million foreign citizens who were here for the purpose of work. By November 300, there were 2020 million 1 thousand of them left (and this is half a million less than in the fall of 800).
It was assumed that the vacated jobs will be occupied by unemployed Russians, but this did not happen in the agricultural sector. The reasons are quite understandable: hard “dirty” non-prestigious work, irregular working hours “in season”, not the highest salaries, remoteness from cities.
And not all employers were ready to be replaced, which is also not surprising. Foreign workers are distinguished by their diligence, agree to work in hot weather, do not require additional payments for processing, are energetic (usually they go to work until they are 35-40 years old) and, to quote one of the agricultural managers, “do not drink or smoke”.
Now the situation has largely lost its severity (at least for plant breeders), seasonal work has been completed, unskilled workers are required, mainly, only for the bulkhead of vegetables and potatoes in storage, but forecasts for the future are very vague.
It seems that the agrarians can only wait for the development of events. Although, according to Olga Prozorovskaya, head of the HR consulting department of the consulting company "For APK", it is better to spend this time looking for feasible solutions in the current circumstances. And first, reconsider your approach to recruiting:
- It is difficult to find employees if you do not understand their interests. Today it is not enough to display information about vacancies on the classifieds site; it is much more efficient to use social networks for searching. To our company page in Instagram constantly requests come from machine operators, milkmaids, just people without a specialty who want to move to the village. The world changes every day, and everyone has to take this into account.
It is very important to soberly assess the attractiveness of the offer that the company makes to potential employees.
- This year, we conducted a small study, which showed that there are many people looking for work (including tractor drivers, welders) on the market. People want to work, they are ready to leave home for the sake of a good job, to endure certain inconveniences, but they expect that this will be compensated by a decent material reward (not a salary of 20-30 thousand rubles). Second, when people move, they hope to get acceptable living conditions. Unfortunately, not all employers are ready to do this.
Of course, not all enterprises are capable of a noticeable increase in personnel costs. In such cases, you can try to approach the problem from the other side and think not about where to find people, but how to change the work technology to get by with the existing number of employees.
- As an example, I can cite a small dairy farm in the Kaluga region. The village in which it is located is far from the city, and the region itself is close to Moscow. Most of the able-bodied population left. Workers for the farm were searched throughout the district, and it was clear that every morning they would need to be brought to their workplace, and every evening they would have to be transported home. And this process will be costly and time consuming, and very inconvenient for rural women, each of whom has a vegetable garden in need of care.
The farm manager proposed to introduce a rotational method: two working days and two days off. The milkmaids were brought in at once for two days. Logistics costs decreased, wages increased (other general business tasks were added to the functionality, for which there was enough time), labor productivity increased, a permanent team was formed. And not a single vegetable garden suffers.
I am sure that similar schemes are used in crop production.
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