Gaidar Forum Experts Create Image of Russian Future Leader
On Day 2 of the 8th Gaidar Forum experts held the panel “Searching for Future Leaders” on 13 January. The moderators of the discussion were Viktor Tolmachev, Chairman of the Supervisory Board at ACIG Group of Companies, and Nadezhda Ryabova, Vice President for Human Resources at Unilever. The participants discussed ways to establish a universal model of leadership for the future, its scaling and transference outside industries and corporations.
The first word was given to Anna Kosheleva, Project Manager with the HR Consulting Department at Alliance Consulting of ACIG Group of Companies. She noted the relevance of the theme and highlighted the results of the company’s research that formulated key objectives for creating a new system of human resources assessment and defined the process initiator.
“Presently, the educational process is not perfect, and often limited to a mere transfer of specific knowledge, which further increases the gap between the expectations of potential customers and effectiveness of trained staff,” points out the speaker.
The need for educational structure reform to improve the competitiveness of youth in the labor market was highlighted by Dmitry Gasten, the Director of HR policy of the State Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM. He voiced his feeling about the current level of specific staff preparing in educational institutions and obvious dissatisfaction of the business community with these results. “When assessing the level of a company’s staff, you must make the changeover
from the term “competence” to the term “capability”, from the assessment of knowledge and skills of specific employees to comprehensive analysis. Integral “capability” of an organization must meet the challenges of the market. It is only by this approach the optimal budget expenditure for the development of staff capacity is possible,” claims Dmitry.
Continuing the subject, the Director of the Corporate University of RusHydro Elena Aksenova drew special attention to the discussion of possible ways of identifying and attracting leaders in terms of acute shortage of skilled personnel. The expert gave an introduction of the company’s experience of training future competent professionals, working with educational institutions and youth initiatives.
During the discussion, the experts concluded that development and introduction of effective talent-scouting tools is substantial. In particular, the Director of Institute for Continuing Training of State and Municipal Employees of the Moscow Oblast at the Odintsovo branch of Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Advisor to the Governor of the Moscow Oblast Dmitry Gorodetsky shared his vision for the successful implementation of the project “Inflow” based in Moscow Domodedovo Airport. “Inflow is a targeted training program for young specialists with further full-time employment in Moscow Domodedovo Airport. This is an opportunity for students to obtain professional knowledge, get familiar with the organizational structure, scope of activities and corporate culture of the company. As of today, more than 3,500 people have participated in,” underlines the speaker.
Expert discussion on the development of promising leadership ended with a wrap-up of the moderators. “All innovations that occur now are impossible without people. People are our main asset. Over the last decade, Russian business pays great attention to increasing its effectiveness, and, therefore, the quality of the personnel recruited. In the near future, one of the principal challenges of the Russian business will be the development of leadership potential at all levels of organizations”, sums up Nadezhda Ryabova.
“The use of standard patterns of scouting for potential leaders is possible, but this process is most effective when individual qualities of the candidates, the specificity of the industry and features of corporate culture of the company are taken into account”, stresses Viktor Tolmachev, co-moderator of the event.