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. So far, Rostelecom has been more engaged in minor "improvements" of an external nature - they carried out a rebranding and, according to representatives of the operator, "polls showed a high level of recognition" (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 in detail. At the same time, they 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 costs 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, urban backbones and subscriber lines.

And although this renewal of local networks will take 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. First, about the close, in recent times, interest in Rostelecom in the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, you probably read / heard. 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. Much attention will also be paid to sales, primarily in the corporate segment. After all, the cash flow from B2G cannot 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“Project implementation 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, concentrating on fixed communications and providing 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-line services telephone connection falls: so, 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.

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 133.7 thousand people worked in the company, follows from the materials of the operator to annual accounts on 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 reduction of Rostelecom's staff 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, this is a fairly large investment in staff 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 operator's materials explain that this was affected by the accrual of a provision for new program long-term motivation, the transition to a new corporate pension program, as well as the growth of the payroll due to a change in the structure of 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, Mr. Libin explains: 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.

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In the next three years, the leading Russian telecom operator Rostelecom plans to cut a quarter of its employees - 10-12 thousand annually. Considering that now Rostelecom personnel (without subsidiaries) has about 150 thousand people, almost 36 thousand workers will lose their jobs.

What is it for? And all for the sake of the same - for the sake of increasing profits by a sharp increase in the exploitation of the remaining workers. After all, it is no coincidence that the company's management declares that it intends to achieve labor productivity indicators at the level of the best companies in the world, comparable in type and scale of activity. In particular, the amount of revenue per employee is planned to increase from 1.8 million rubles in 2013 to 2.5 million rubles in 2018, according to the presentation of Rostelecom. This means that by reducing a quarter of employees, the exploitation of the remaining will increase by almost 40%.

Only due to net savings on salaries, Rostelecom, whose payroll is now more than 47 billion rubles, will receive almost 12 billion in profit. And in terms of total personnel costs, the savings (that is, profit in the pocket of the company's owners) will amount to more than 17 billion rubles.

Considering also that Rostelecom is upgrading its equipment, moving from analog and digital equipment to a new generation of programmable switches (Soft Switches) and building fiber-optic communication lines, the company's profit will increase even more.

There is a reason to give a damn about the conscience and interests of the working people, right?

Rostelecom President Sergey Kalugin, of course, promises that the rest can rejoice, because, they say, by reducing the staff, the company will increase the wages of those of its employees who manage to avoid being fired. Yes, but it's hard to believe. Until now, no "optimization" of this kind has led to an increase in wages at least for ordinary personnel. Yes, the remuneration of top management may well increase. But those who account for the creation of all the company's profits will have to work much more and, at best, for the same money, if not less.

Why? Yes, because the laid-off employees will increase the army of the unemployed, which means the price work force the labor market will decline. Why would the management of Rostelecom pay their employees more if the labor exchange is full of those who, in order not to die of hunger, will agree to work for less money?

Therefore, none of the hired workers of Rostelecom will not seem enough - neither to those who will be laid off, nor to those who are “lucky”.

What to do? Fight without letting anyone get fired! Methods and forms of struggle are known. And the main thing in the victory over the employer is the unification of the workers and their class solidarity. And this is not just our good wish, it is a vital necessity for the Rostelecom employees themselves if they want to survive.

S. Agapchenko