Strategic personnel management: Context of retirement age reform in Russia

Abstract

Since January 2019, retirement age in the Russian Federation will be gradually raised. Over the next tenyears, the retirement age will be raised by five years to 60 years for women and 65 years for men. TheRussian labor market is characterized by a fairly high level of ageism, manifested in the reluctance ofemployers to hire people older than 40-45 years, to train and promote workers of pre-retirement age. Thedecrease in the number of young generations and the increase in the proportion of older people actualize thetasks of working with aged personnel. Given these circumstances, organizations will respond to externalchallenges, adapting their personnel policies to new realities. The aim of this work is to identify the willingnessof organizations to employ older workers in terms of pension reform in Russia, and determine how to changeHR practices in these conditions. The paper consists of two parts. In the first part, authors analyze the trendsassociated with the increasing share of older generations on the Russian labor market and the qualitativecharacteristics of this group of workers. The information base is the Russian Federal State Statistics Servicemicrodata (labor force survey) and the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. Based on this, there are madeconclusions about the segments of employment of pre-retirement age workers (50 years for women and 55years for men) in the labor market and their competitiveness. The second part of the paper presents results ofexpert survey of heads of HR-activities of 38 organizations of a large Russian city on the need andopportunities to expand the use of the labor of pre-retirement age workers, including the transformation ofpersonnel management technologies to new realities:- possibility and conditions of using attractive for older workers working hours;- willingness of employers to participate in the training of personnel of pre-retirement age and conditions ofinvestment in their human capital;- changes in the practices of recruitment, adaptation and release of personnel, taking into account changes inthe Russian legislation.The main results of the study: organizations operating in highly competitive markets and facing a shortage ofpersonnel, demonstrate a willingness to expand the use of older workers’ labor and adapt the existing HRpractices to them.However, most employers are not yet ready to change their personnel practices and adaptthem to the increase in the older labor force in the labor market. To support older workers in the labor marketthere is required the elaboration of state programs for the adaptation of employees of pre-retirement age in thelabor market.