Rusal talked about ways to compete for competent personnel.

One of the main trends affecting the modern labor market is the ongoing urbanization. The concentration of labor resources in megacities creates significant personnel difficulties for enterprises in small towns. This was discussed during the discussion at the session "Megacities on the frontier. How Cities respond to the global challenges of the labor market", which took place within the framework of the Cloud Cities Technology Forum, said Natalia Albrecht, Rusal's Deputy General Director for Personnel Management.

"Rusal remains one of the few companies that continues to operate not only in Russia, but also abroad, on five continents. The trends are similar everywhere: the movement from small towns to megacities," Natalia Albrecht said.

Since most of Rusal's enterprises are located in small towns, the company implements a number of educational and social programs to avoid the problem of staff shortages. Currently, the average staffing of Rusal's enterprises exceeds 96%, the expert said.

Natalia Albrecht also spoke about the main directions of the company's work to prevent staff shortages.

According to her, migration to megacities is primarily related to the availability of developed infrastructure there. Therefore, in the cities of responsibility, Rusal is actively investing in the creation of social infrastructure — medical centers, schools, kindergartens, and martial arts centers. Another area of development is the creation of urban parks to enhance the comfort of the urban environment. In addition, Rusal has built a branch of Irkutsk Polytechnic University (IRNTU) in Taishet so that young people can receive higher education in their hometown. As Albrecht emphasized, this is due to the company's policy of fighting for competent personnel.

"We didn't work with schoolchildren 10 years ago, but now we are working to help children and girls make informed choices: these are Energy Classes, Rusal Classes in schools, and then Professionalism projects in colleges. So that it doesn't happen like before: a young specialist graduates and comes to work, the boss tells him "forget everything you were taught, I'll tell you how it should be." That's our goal, so that, of course, this does not happen. Therefore, starting from the 2nd year in all our flagship universities — Irkutsk Polytechnic University, Siberian Federal University — we make customized programs that are specifically needed for us, we provide additional knowledge to basic education," said the top manager of Rusal.

According to Albrecht, the IT Academy has become one of the company's most successful projects: SibFU students get jobs at the company's enterprises from the second year, participate in real projects and continue to work after graduation — this is how they manage to compete for programmers with technology giants. Another educational project of Rusal is the Business Academy, where students receive additional specialties in sales, logistics, and procurement. As Albrecht explained, the commercial function is the main one for a business, since it provides income, but most university graduates who come to work at Rusal did not receive such knowledge during their studies, so the company offers them practical knowledge that is inextricably linked to the theory underlying the basic course.

According to the top manager, a comfortable living environment, the opportunity to get a high-quality education and decent work close to home make it possible to reverse migration trends, thus ensuring the availability of personnel at enterprises in small towns of the country.

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