Human Resources for the Communications Industry: a Study

GlavSovetnik Communications Agency, the Russian Managers Association and the Institute for Strategic Communications and Social Projects (Instratcom) are conducting a study on the changes that the communications industry has been undergoing since 2022.

The panel was organized by the Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Society of Sociologists and the Sociological Research journal.

According to the results of the already completed similar study, over 90% of agencies noted the adverse trend for the search for new clients, the reduction of budgets by the current clients, and the overall decrease in the number of clients.

The past year of 2022 showed that companies temporarily refused from hiring new employees while keeping the already existing staff, reduced the number of employees or kept only the key ones.

“In 2023, the industry is facing new challenges. Communications agencies’ clients continue cutting and adjusting their budgets, while the market is over-saturated with professionals looking for jobs. In this regard, the issue of training staff and investing in already-hired employees is gaining particular importance,” says Boris Molodov, GlavSovetnik CEO.

In the new iteration, GlavSovetnik and Instratcom’s plan is not only to study the general trends in the human resources potential of the communications industry, but also to pay attention to such important aspects as training newly hired employees, conducting intra-company mentoring programs, as well as retraining and advanced training of ongoing agency employees. Besides, there is a need to see how the communications market adapts to new realities and describe these tendencies.

“We have already been able to establish the tendency for the past year of 2022 and now plan to highlight the key aspects of the human resources situation in the industry for the current year of 2023. These very aspects will have a decisive impact on communications in present-day Russia,” says Andrey Kuryukin, PhD in Political Science and Deputy CEO of Instracom.

“Up to now, such studies have not been conducted within the sociology of education field. They were limited to educational institutions. The realities of our time require an urgent sociological survey on the situation in innovative industries!”, insists Tatiana Likhacheva, PhD, member correspondent of the International Teacher’s Training Academy of Science, and Senior Manager at Instratcom.

The professional standards of the communications industry continue being formed, and the new data will be integrated into them.

The results of the study will be announced in April 2023 at the Russian Managers Association platform; the communications industry professional standards will be updated based on the agencies’ suggestions and then sent to relevant associations.