On June 3, 2021, in Saint-Petersburg, Director General of ROSATOM Aleksei Likhachev took part in the SPIEF-2021 session “Russia in the Race for Top Global Managerial Talent” at the 24th Saint-Petersburg International Economic Forum.
First Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration Sergei Kirienko, Head of the Federal Agency for CIS Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation (Rossotrudnichestvo) Yevgeni Primakov, Chairman of the Board of PO SIBUR Holding Dmitri Konov and others also took part in the session. Alexei Komissarov, Prorector, Director of RANEPA, General Director of ANO “Russia is the Country of Opportunities”, was the moderator.
Addressing the session, Sergei Kirienko said: “The State should provide citizens with an opportunity for professional development and freedom of choice. We need a system of support for gifted staff and a system of social lifts. It is important to understand that the competition over specialists will only grow.”
Aleksei Likhachev noted: “We are building up the staff training work both in Russia and abroad. There are targets: in the 2030’s we need to draft in up to 45,000 foreign specialists. These needs are due to, in the first place, construction of NPPs abroad (including under BOO scheme (build-own-operate)) and their further operation during many tens of years. If such countries like Finland and Hungary already have developed nuclear infrastructure, Bangladesh and Egypt are not just to build NPPs and train staff for their operation but also to create the entire sectors starting from regulatory authorities and ending with issues of public acceptance of nuclear power.”
Likhachev also said that ROSATOM has a systemic training of people to work in nuclear. This work is carried out in different formats, including training of foreign specialists in the core universities of ROSATOM in Russia and implementation of joint programs between Russian universities and host countries. He also mentioned two corporate academies which are engaged in upgrading skills of employees.
“The third task we are facing is to become the best in emergence of the human potential,” the Head of ROSATOM stressed.
The session participants agreed that in the conditions of growth of the competition for high-skilled employees it is important to solve problems of improving competitiveness of the Russian professional and higher education system as a single set.