Rostelecom has laid off 25.2 thousand employees over the past three years as part of its transformation from a classic fixed-line operator to a digital service provider. As a result, the company increased average revenue per employee by 21%, to RUB 2.3 million. per year, but still lags behind the level of the largest Russian mobile operators. Until 2020, Rostelecom is preparing to lay off another 14-24 thousand people, but the process may be complicated by trade unions.

In 2017, Rostelecom laid off 8.8 thousand employees, at the end of the year the company employed 133.7 thousand people, follows from the operator's materials to the annual reporting on international standards. This was confirmed to Kommersant by a representative of Rostelecom. Reductions are part of the boost program operating efficiency, launched by Rostelecom in 2014 under the former president of the operator, Sergey Kalugin. By the end of 2014, the company employed 158.8 thousand employees. In 2015, their number decreased by 5.6%, to 149.9 thousand. In 2016, another 4.9% were fired, to 142.5 thousand people. In 2017, the rate of cuts accelerated to 6.2%. At first, Rostelecom planned to cut employees by 7-10% per year until 2018. In December 2015, the strategy was updated, setting a target for the number of employees in 2020 - 110-130 thousand people.

The rate of staff reduction at Rostelecom in absolute terms will decrease, and the target number of employees as part of the company's strategy is 110-120 thousand people, Kommersant specified financial director Rostelecom Kai-Uwe Melhorn. “With the transition to digital, there will be both partial layoffs and hiring of employees with new digital competencies. We also contribute to retraining projects, which is a fairly large investment in staff development. We give employees the opportunity to learn digital skills,” said Mehlhorn.

In 2016, the optimization of the staff allowed to reduce personnel costs by 1%, noted in the annual report of Rostelecom. But in 2017, personnel costs increased again - by 3%, to 93.4 billion rubles. The operator's materials explain that this was affected by the accrual of a provision for new program long-term motivation, transition to a new corporate pension program, as well as the growth of the payroll due to a change in the structure of the staff due to digital transformation. Rostelecom sets the task of increasing revenue per employee and reducing the share of the payroll fund in total expenses, Mikhail Oseevsky, president of the operator, told Kommersant.

In 2014, revenue per employee of Rostelecom amounted to 1.9 million rubles, and at the end of 2017 it reached 2.3 million rubles. According to this level, Rostelecom is inferior to the largest mobile operators, Raiffeisenbank analyst Sergey Libin states. In MTS, this indicator at the end of 2016 amounted to 6.3 million rubles. in MegaFon - 9.9 million rubles, in VimpelCom - 11.6 million rubles. Fixed-line operators have higher personnel costs, including equipment adjusters who provide Internet access to households, explains Mr. Libin: if three cellular operators have personnel costs of 8-10% of revenue, then Rostelecom has about 30 %. According to this indicator, Rostelecom is closer to the German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom, the analyst believes. So, in 2017, Deutsche Telekom's personnel costs amounted to €15.5 billion with 216.5 thousand employees and revenue of €74.9 billion. That is, the wage fund accounted for 20.7% of revenue, and revenue per employee was € 346.2 thousand per year (compared to approximately €34.9 thousand in Rostelecom at the weighted average rate for 2017).

Rostelecom has long taken a course towards optimization in order to make the company compact, while some of the employees were taken out of the state for outsourcing while maintaining functions, said Anatoly Nazeykin, chairman of the trade union of communications workers of Russia. Wherein official information about the planned layoffs in Rostelecom up to 23.7 thousand people by 2020, the trade union did not receive, he emphasizes. This is a very serious reduction - if the plans are confirmed, Mr. Nazeikin emphasizes, the trade union is ready to enter into negotiations with Rostelecom, at which the fate of each employee to be laid off will be discussed.

PJSC Rostelecom has published a number of documents on annual reporting. It follows from the materials that the company has laid off more than 38,000 employees over the past five years. At the same time, in the near future, until 2020, the telecommunications corporation plans to leave another 10-18% of workers without work.

The operator's press service explained to a Moika78 correspondent that in 2013 Rostelecom adopted a new development strategy, which was updated two years later.

“The headcount dynamics is determined by the corporation's transition to a more efficient management model, as well as a whole range of organizational changes related to the implementation of strategic business projects. A week later, on March 21, we will announce further transformations in the company's directions. Now the main goal is to transform Rostelecom into a provider digital services by 2020",

- representatives of the telecom operator said.

We add that last year almost 8.8 thousand employees were fired from the company. And over the past three years in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, the number of personnel has been optimized by 23%. At the same time, efficiency in the form of revenue per employee increased to 2.3 million rubles. However, Rostelecom is not just cutting staff in order to optimize, the company begins to cooperate with some employees as part of outsourcing.

At the same time, in the open world wide web you can find hundreds of reviews about working at Rostelecom Corporation. And most of them are not positive. Former employees complain about low salaries, terrible working conditions and staff turnover.

“In the company, 25% of employees were dispersed under the pretext that we will increase the salary of the remaining employees. As a result, the salary decreased, the surcharges were removed. And the management continues mass layoffs. They say: "If you don't like it, contact the unions and sue",

- writes a Rostelecom employee from Yekaterinburg.

According to netizens, workers are being deprived of bonuses, and there is also a constant shortage of personnel: “They are reducing day by day. If you want to get a job in this “stable company”, you need to be prepared that an employee can be fired at any time. It doesn't matter how long you've been here."

A resident of Moscow says: "You can work a lot, or you can do nothing - they will pay the same."

Workers from Kemerovo call the company unpromising from the point of view of the employee: “Now the company has full outsourcing, career missing".

The St. Petersburg Federation of Trade Unions Moika78 reported: “Of course, every employee has the right to challenge the dismissal in court. First of all, trade union organizations should protect the rights of employees. So, we have an agreement with the primary subsidiary of Rostelecom, according to which we provide free legal assistance to trade union activists and members of the trade union.

Assistance includes advice and training required documents including lawsuits in court. Workers can get the contacts of a lawyer from the chairman of the primary trade union organization. If the employee is not a member of a trade union, then he can turn to paid legal advice. Or he may ask the prosecutor's office to go to court to protect the rights of the employee in accordance with Part 1 of Art. 45 of the Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation.

If an employee has been made redundant, you should urgently contact a lawyer to assess the chances of reinstatement. We recommend that you do not waste time on complaints to the prosecutor's office or the state labor inspectorate, but immediately challenge the dismissal in judicial order. You can apply to the court within a month after the reduction.

At the same time, the press service of Rostelecom stated: “The company is socially responsible, unconditionally complies with the requirements of the current Labor Legislation RF. Accordingly, within the framework of planning and carrying out organizational and staff activities, it is mandatory to notify in a timely manner trade union organization, which will coordinate all subsequent steps within the framework social partnership. This measure is aimed at eliminating conflicts, labor disputes and ensuring that the interests of both employees and the employer are respected during the redundancy procedure. In addition, all laid-off workers are provided with maximum support and assistance in finding employment both by the company itself and through interaction with the territorial employment authorities.”

Rostelecom has laid off 25.2 thousand employees over the past three years as part of its transformation from a classic fixed-line operator to a digital services provider.

As a result, the company increased average revenue per employee by 21%, to RUB 2.3 million. per year, but still lags far behind the level of the largest Russian mobile operators. Until 2020, Rostelecom is preparing to lay off another 14-24 thousand people, but the process may be complicated by trade unions.

In 2017, Rostelecom laid off 8.8 thousand employees, at the end of the year the company employed 133.7 thousand people, follows from the operator's materials for annual reporting in accordance with international standards. This was confirmed to Kommersant by a representative of Rostelecom. The cuts are part of a program to improve operating efficiency launched at Rostelecom in 2014 under the operator's former president, Sergey Kalugin. By the end of 2014, the company employed 158.8 thousand employees. In 2015, their number decreased by 5.6%, to 149.9 thousand. In 2016, another 4.9% were fired, to 142.5 thousand people. In 2017, the rate of cuts accelerated to 6.2%. At first, Rostelecom planned to cut employees by 7-10% per year until 2018. In December 2015, the strategy was updated, setting a target for the number of employees in 2020 - 110-130 thousand people.

The rate of staff cuts at Rostelecom will decrease in absolute terms, and the target number of employees as part of the company's strategy is 110,000-120,000 people, Kai-Uwe Mehlhorn, CFO of Rostelecom, told Kommersant. “With the transition to digital, there will be both partial layoffs and hiring of employees with new digital competencies. We also contribute to retraining projects, this is a fairly large investment in personnel development. We give employees the opportunity to learn digital skills,” Mr. Mehlhorn emphasized.

In 2016, the optimization of the state made it possible to reduce personnel costs by 1%, according to Rostelecom's annual report. But in 2017, personnel costs increased again - by 3%, to 93.4 billion rubles. The materials of the operator explain that this was affected by the accrual of a reserve under the new long-term motivation program, the transition to a new corporate pension program, as well as the growth of the payroll due to a change in the structure of the personnel due to digital transformation. Rostelecom sets the task of increasing revenue per employee and reducing the share of the payroll fund in total expenses, Mikhail Oseevsky, president of the operator, told Kommersant.

In 2014, revenue per employee of Rostelecom amounted to 1.9 million rubles, and at the end of 2017 it reached 2.3 million rubles. According to this level, Rostelecom is inferior to the largest mobile operators, Raiffeisenbank analyst Sergey Libin states. In MTS, this indicator at the end of 2016 amounted to 6.3 million rubles. in MegaFon - 9.9 million rubles, in VimpelCom - 11.6 million rubles. Fixed-line operators have higher personnel costs, including equipment adjusters who provide Internet to households, explains Mr. Libin: if three cellular operators have personnel costs of 8-10% of revenue, then Rostelecom has about 30 %. According to this indicator, Rostelecom is closer to the German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom, the analyst believes. So, in 2017, Deutsche Telekom's personnel costs amounted to €15.5 billion with 216.5 thousand employees and revenue of €74.9 billion. That is, the wage fund accounted for 20.7% of revenue, and revenue per employee was € 346.2 thousand per year (compared to approximately €34.9 thousand in Rostelecom at the weighted average rate for 2017).

Rostelecom has long taken a course towards optimization in order to make the company compact, while some of the employees were taken out of the state for outsourcing with the preservation of functions, said Anatoly Nazeykin, chairman of the trade union of communications workers of Russia. At the same time, the trade union has not received any official information about layoffs of up to 23.7 thousand people planned in Rostelecom by 2020, he emphasizes. This is a very serious reduction - if the plans are confirmed, Mr. Nazeykin emphasizes, the trade union is ready to enter into negotiations with Rostelecom, at which the fate of each employee to be laid off will be discussed.

A grandiose event is expected in the Russian market both in terms of scale and consequences. "National Champion" - Rostelecom has decided to think about its future and is developing a program of qualitative changes that will cover the time horizon for the next decade.

"On sharp turns ... (c)"

On the one hand, all these "movements" were quite expected, but so far the processes of cost reduction, probably, were not so large-scale. Or at least not declared the number one target. Rostelecom has so far been more engaged in minor "improvements" of an external nature - they carried out a rebranding and, according to representatives of the operator, "polls showed high level recognizability" (I remember "eggs" were also discussed and the authors of those proposals also assured of the correctness and success of the appearance of these "drawings"). Then they began to transfer regional assets under this brand, changed the design and carried out repairs in sales offices, and so on through the little things At the same time, we got the opposite effect - revenue in the B2C segment, compared to the same period last year, decreased.

Only growth in the B2G segment is noticeable, thanks to the almost monopoly participation of the Republic of Tatarstan and the generosity of the state budget

In addition to the long overdue issues of modernizing the technical infrastructure, and the blow will be directed primarily at the state of affairs and the development of local networks, structural and organizational changes are also planned. And this reorganization in its most severe form will be a significant (taking into account the entire period of the program) reduction in the number of employees throughout the "new" Rostelecom. So a kind of "end of the world" is quite real, because just at the end of December it is planned to consider the draft of this program by the board of directors of Rostelecom. And some lucky people from Skylink should have already been affected, since in the next six months from 25% to 40% of the staff should be reduced.

First of all, logically, duplicating positions in the same accounting departments will fall under the reductions. Also, by reducing the number of subdivisions, lower and middle managers become candidates "for departure". But it is better for the remaining managers not to rejoice too much, since as further reductions in ordinary personnel are made, this fate will also affect some of them.

Rostelecom has already studied the structure of its operating expenses and found "extreme"*

The need for financing only for the modernization of communication networks is estimated at $ 10 billion. Rostelecom expects that after replacing the copper cable infrastructure with fiber optics and the widespread use of soft switches, they will significantly reduce the technical staff responsible for the operation of automatic telephone exchanges, city trunk lines and subscriber lines.

And although this renewal of local networks will require a lot of time and the reduction processes will take place gradually, this will affect several tens of thousands of Rostelecom specialists ("Implementation of this program ... will reduce the cost of operating the network by 2 times and reduce the number of technical personnel who now has 98 thousand people").

Alignment with the best

There are two reasons for the restructuring of this large machine, it seems to me. Both are external. Firstly, you probably read/heard about the close interest in Rostelecom in the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications lately. In order for the "body" to start moving, a force impact, an impulse, is required. Secondly, Rostelecom, having got into the same club of interests with the "big Russian three", must somehow move, so that the title of "national champion" does not become symbolic. In its presentation*, Rostelecom compared itself with its competitors and it is clearly seen that the same MTS, having several times lower indicators, except for the number of cellular subscribers and points of sale, outperformed Rostelecom. And other operators are not far behind.

Comparison of the results and business performance of Rostelecom with the indicators of the "big three" (part of the 7th slide) *

The target indicator for management will be the level of profitability of at least 40% ** (according to the reporting for 9 months of this year - 39.4%). Therefore, it is possible that Rostelecom, in one form or another, will "leave" its own retail network. great attention will also be given to sales and primarily in the corporate segment. After all cash flow B2G can't be big all the time...

Rostelecom clarified the size of staff reductions in 2015: the number of employees will decrease by 7.9-11.1 thousand people, more than a third of them are managers of different levels

Rostelecom office building in Moscow (Photo: RIA Novosti)

For the sake of efficiency

Rostelecom announced its intention to optimize the number of employees back in November 2014. Now the company employs 158 thousand people. Every year this number will decrease by 5-7% starting from 2015, Representative of the operator Andrey Polyakov. This year, the main blow will fall on administrators and managers, promised the president of Rostelecom Sergey Kalugin:"In 2015, the company plans to cut 15% of the administrative and management staff - about 2.5% of the total number of employees of the company".

According to his calculations, this will save about 4.3 billion rubles. in year.Managers will be laid off different levels: from individual top managers to line managers, Polyakov explained, adding that“The implementation of the project involves the “flattening” of structures and the elimination of “excessive” layers of management in all functions at all levels of management verticals.

It is also planned to reform retail and remote service systems, unify IT infrastructure and other sectors. Employees of retirement age will be the first to be laid off. As a result, Rostelecom plans to increase labor productivity: the share of total revenue attributable to one employee should increase from about 1.96 million rubles. by 15%.

Not everyone will cut

VimpelCom is also going to optimize costs by reducing staff, the company's CEO Mikhail Slobodin said this during the summing up of 2014: “The question is not so much how to spend less, but how to get more out of what we spend . We already carried out headcount optimization last year, and we will carry it out this year as well. We are transferring some of the employees to outsourcing, and some will simply be optimized [fired].” Now VimpelCom employs approximately 24.5 thousand people, and the operator's revenue for 2014 amounted to almost 281.9 billion rubles, or about 11.5 million rubles. per employee.

The press service of MegaFon specified that the company's staff includes about 30 thousand people. In 2014, revenue amounted to 314.8 billion rubles, or approximately 10.5 million rubles. per employee. Asked about the possibility of reductions operator representative Aliya Beketova replies evasively:"We're not looking to cut or grow staff this year."

MTS representative Dmitry Solodovnikov said that the operator, on the contrary, intends to increase the number of staff. “We do not need to rebuild or cut anything on purpose in order to become more efficient. On the contrary, in some areas we do not exclude the possibility of an increase staffing to strengthen its position in the market,” he stressed. According to Solodovnikov, the company employs about 60 thousand people, only in Russia about 30 thousand work. MTS will report for 2014 only on Tuesday, March 17; according to Uralsib's forecast, the group's revenue will amount to almost 408 billion rubles, that is, approximately 6.8 million rubles. per person.

Konstantin Prokshin, a representative of the T2-RTK company operating under the Tele2 brand, said that the operator also does not plan to reduce staff. “The launch of 3G and 4G networks, access to new regions, including Moscow, will require the involvement of a large number of professionals in the processes,” he said. Now the company employs 8.5 thousand people.

Without mobile communications

According to Kalugin, 2014 was the first year of Rostelecom's development under the new strategy: the operator abandoned mobile business focusing on fixed-line communications and digital services. Mobile assets were transferred to T2-RTK, in which Rostelecom owns 45% , more 27,5% - VTB.

In last year's revenue, the results of Rostelecom's mobile subsidiaries are taken into account only for the first months of 2014 - a little less than 12 billion rub., a year earlier this business brought almost 35 billion rub. Rostelecom's revenue in 2014, excluding mobile communications, amounted to 298.9 billion rub., or 3% more than in 2013. Consolidated revenue, including mobile services, decreased by 5% , before 310.9 billion rub.

Revenue from the provision of fixed telephone services is falling: for example, for local calls in 2014, the operator received 80.5 billion rub., or 8% less than a year earlier. Lost revenues are offset by growth in more promising sectors - broadband access and pay TV.

Net profit of Rostelecom, excluding mobile communications, decreased by 51% , before 13.2 billion RUB: the company explains this by revaluation financial instruments and the high base of 2013.