Labor market: fell – wrung out
From the editorial office:
The article is focused on the problems of advertising companies and the media, but, undoubtedly, is of interest to managers and employees of organizations from any industry.
Tatiana Antropova, <url>The crisis is a reason to evaluate the effectiveness of employees and get rid of the "fat".
How to evaluate everyone on their merits and not dismiss the most valuable personnel?
The labor market has frozen: the "Russian Personnel Association" records a reduction in transitions from agency to agency by half. "There are examples when candidates refuse to move to another agency for a higher position, an interesting client, with a salary increase due to instability or, more precisely, the stability of their agency," agrees Yulia Poltaratskaya, head of the recruitment department for the advertising and media industry of the Agency Contact Group.
Shrinkage, utruskaIn the media (TV, radio and press)
there is a sharp decrease in the activity of finding and hiring managers of new directions. At the same time, the Aktion-Media publishing house, according to the IR, has already cut more than 30% of the staff, the Ekpert Publishing house is "squeezing" the back office and salaries, there are cuts in the Forward Media Group publishing house. Large media holdings are actively reducing costs due to stationery, salaries (by an average of 10%) and bonuses, and also intend to reduce staff mainly due to the management layer. There is a 15% reduction in staff at the St. Petersburg - Fifth Channel shopping mall. "The reduction will primarily affect employees who are involved in the production of the channel's own programs," Natalia Selezneva, project director, believes MediaJobs.RU . STS and TNT channels are planning to reduce first of all freelance employees
According to top managers of leading advertising agencies, they are already observing or expecting a drop in advertising budgets by about 30%. In this regard, almost all companies introduce a cost optimization policy. All network and major Russian creative agencies have frozen about 20% of vacancies. At the same time, according to unconfirmed information, serious cuts were made in the "Native Speech", and entry-level specialists in the BBDO group, in the Instinct agency, did not escape this fate. Unofficial IR sources also report a 50% reduction in salaries to the creators of the Movie agency, the salary at the Ogilvy creative agency was reduced by 40%, and at Rapp Collins they are cutting salaries and reducing staff. The decline in vacancies is also observed in BTL agencies. Here, the "extra people" are often employees of event departments.
Internet agencies/ media departments of sites remain active in the search for personnel. So, in October alone, Yandex placed about 70 job ads. In media agencies where there was an acute shortage of personnel, there is almost no suspension of the search. "In media agencies, positions like account director remain relevant. We have several orders for directors of customer service, which is associated with attracting new budgets to agencies," Anna Kogan, consultant of the Russian Personnel Association, adds an optimistic note. Moreover, in ZenithOptimedia, after the recent recertification of employees, some even raised their salaries by 3-4 thousand rubles.
When selecting employees independently, headhunters note, companies make decisions very slowly: they hope for a reduction in the salary expectations of candidates. "According to statistics, it should take one or two months for a person to be ready to accept an offer with a decrease in earnings," Yulia Poltaratskaya notes. "So, if the main cuts take place in the first quarter of 2009, then by the end of the second quarter we can confidently talk about a reduction in wages by at least 30%."
Looking into the futureIt is obvious that layoffs can be triggered by clients leaving agencies or declaring some of them bankrupt.
Summarizing the opinions of analysts, we can distinguish three scenarios for the development of the economic situation in 2009.
Optimistic. The market will recover and begin to gain momentum again. "There will be a "defrosting" of budgets, and by the middle of the second half of the year everything will return to normal. Namely: personnel hunger, which will increase due to the "failure" of the birth rate of 1991 – 2000, – says Yulia Poltaratskaya. – To be honest, I find it hard to believe, the recovery mechanism has not yet been found, plus the world economy will definitely not recover so quickly. In any case, there will be no growth in the advertising budget market in 2009, even with such an optimistic forecast."
Average pessimistic. A shallow but long recession. The danger of such a situation lies in its duration. "If the whole of 2009 passes in such a "depressive" state, then companies will, as it were, wait it out, hiding, without drastic cuts and active recruitment. On average, salaries will not grow, and in some cases they will decrease, – says Yulia Poltaratskaya. – In such a situation, it is already possible to fix the fall of the advertising market by the end of 2009 by at least 10% compared to 2008."
In a crisis, employees will be ready to work, figuratively speaking, for food and an idea. The key question is: is a top manager or owner able to sell an idea to his employees or not?
Pessimistic. The crisis will develop for the worse, as a result of which the labor market will fall following the fall of the companies' business. As a result, massive cuts in all positions, unemployment, the flow of specialists into more stable/sustainable industries – the production and sale of everyday products, the public sector.
"So far, the situation is most likely to develop according to the third scenario. This is my personal subjective assessment, which is based on conversations with top managers from various industries," Poltaratskaya sums up. "If this happens, then the RA will have to get rid of half, or even more, of the staff of assistants and the back office."
How to "calculate" and save the most valuable employees? After all, in the Republic of Armenia, fixed capital and "raw materials" for business prosperity are "gray matter" in the minds of employees. Lilia Kazintseva, Commercial director of the Russian Personnel Association company, suggests evaluating the potential of employees not from the point of view of past achievements, but looking into the future. To do this, you can "test" everyone by answering the following questions:
- Are the functions performed by the employee duplicated by others or unique?
- Is the absence of this employee critical for the efficiency of the company's business processes?
- The level of loyalty in a crisis situation: is the employee motivated and psychologically ready to productively go through difficult times with the company?
- having unique skills and knowledge;
- how difficult will it be to find the same ready-made specialist/manager?
- how costly will it be to create from scratch the field of activity that will "die" with the departure of an employee?
Depending on the severity of the crisis, all RA will have to resort to cost optimization or austerity. How can a company competently save on staff and stay afloat? HR specialists have several points of view on cost optimization.
The most popular method of optimizing the HR budget is "freezing" recruiting, that is, reducing the number of vacancies, which we are observing. Advertisers are not ready for another obvious way to save money – to abandon corporate events. "Corporate events create a positive emotional background, unite the team. It is clear that in an unstable situation, their importance only increases, – explains Irina Titova. "We try not to give up holding corporate parties."
Many companies are busy revising the structure of total income in order to minimize the risks of the amount of payments when leaving/reduction of employees next year. This implies a change in the ratio of the constant and variable part of salaries in favor of increasing the latter. Thus, the long-term motivation of employees is being replaced by a short-term one. The company, fulfilling its obligations to employees in full, proves its stability and solvency. "In this case, the regularity of payments plays a role," Yulia Poltaratskaya emphasizes. Ekaterina Selyavina, CEO of the Movie agency, does not rule out that for the new year there will be conditions in labor contracts that reflect the realities of today. That is, there is no 15% indexation, which our market got used to so quickly.
HR consultants advise to reduce personnel development costs (trainings/training) last of all, as the value of each employee increases in the context of a general decrease in the number of personnel. Irina Titova, HR Director of Aegis Media/OKS communications group, believes that it is quite possible to revise the budget for employee training and make a list of priority trainings and their participants. "It's not worth giving up training altogether," she says. "During the crisis period, it is important to continue investing in the professional development of employees, to let people know that they are valued, and the company is ready to invest in their growth."
If there is a need for austerity in costs, the Contact Agency advises to transfer most of the employees to freelance, thereby reducing the costs of the office and the social package. The social package, as well as corporate events, can be sacrificed in any case: employee loyalty will grow in proportion to the growth of unemployment, no matter how pragmatic it may sound. "Unfortunately, not all top managers of companies are ready for crisis management, as many of them were hired to achieve ambitious goals, for development, not survival," Yulia Poltaratskaya designates the problem. In a crisis, employees will be ready to work, figuratively speaking, for food and an idea. The key question is: is a top manager or owner able to sell an idea to his employees or not? If yes, then you can cut all personnel costs boldly, including wages. If not, then the price of the issue will be higher. Natalia Selezneva fully admits that already in 2009 new multimedia projects may appear, which will bring together a team of the brightest professionals from other media and advertising, offering them pre-crisis salaries.
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru21.01.2009