As a leading innovative IT-driven provider operating in all regions of Russia, MegaFon is committed to building and developing a strong and successful team of industry professionals.
To achieve these goals we focus on the following areas: organisational development and improvement of business processes, productivity and professional development of employees, goal setting and KPI management and improvement, stronger corporate culture and enhanced employee engagement across all levels of the business.
As of 31 December 2016, MegaFon employed 31,805 people, an increase of 229 compared to the previous year. We have a very agediverse talent pool and provide development and career opportunities to all of our employees. Due to our focus on technology and innovation, most of our employees have attained higher education. Most of our employees work under employment contracts. Overall, the profile of our workforce and our headcount are driven by MegaFon’s organisational development and changes in the governance system.
* Number of employees includes full-time and temporary employees, excluding maternity or parental leave and outsourced employees, and represents the annual time average.
MegaFon provides equal opportunities for both male and female employees, and does not draw any gender distinctions in terms of career development and promotion. The key factors that determine an employee’s progression are a high level of professionalism, the ability to work in a team, leadership skills and the achievement of results. In terms of female employees, almost 50% of all management and leadership positions reporting directly to the CEO are held by women. They lead some of MegaFon’s key functions including Operations, Strategy and Organisational Development, Corporate Business Development, Shared Services Centre, Corporate Development and Human Resources. Currently we have women in management and leadership roles in almost every project critical to our business. Recently we have also seen stronger representation of women among the directors of the Company’s regional branches. In 2016, the proportion of female leaders in the Head Office and branches reached 30% and continues to grow steadily.
In 2016, we continued developing and strengthening MegaFon’s organisational structure. Our new approach to capability building enables faster and better responses to market challenges and offers improved agility and customer focus, to better meet the needs of our customers with new solutions.
Our key initiatives in 2016:
This transformation is aimed at improving governance and streamlining cooperation between business units.
The new approach means that task-specific teams are no longer attached to a particular region but operate together as separate virtual groups, based either on common business objectives or their involvement in specific projects. Modern technology enables effective remote collaboration between members of these groups, eliminating the need for personnel relocation. This helps the Company retain the best talent and build deep expertise, while offering superior solutions to meet the diverse business needs of our customers.
MegaFon has dozens of dedicated expert teams focused on specific activities across the Company and all regions of operation. These include both large functions (Network Operational Centre, Customer Care Centre) and small dedicated units (SMS Spam Blocking Centre, Roaming Support Centre). This arrangement enables employees based in different regions to address federal-level corporate tasks, leveraging and broadening their expertise while feeling part of a larger team, regardless of the distance separating them.
A unique world-class multifunctional service centre, "Pikta" was set up to ensure standardised and faster processes across a number of areas, while delivering superior customer experience. "Pikta" covers a wide range of tasks including finance, accounting and HR operations, planning and support for order processing, receivables administration, and support of corporate business operations. "Pikta" Centre and other business units interact via digital channels to deliver the fastest operational performance. Looking ahead, we are planning to further expand the range of services provided by the centre and to make it available to external customers.
Remote collaboration capability within project teams is crucial when operating across vast distances. It facilitates access to crucial expertise at any time, regardless of where the expert is physically located, and allows us to deliver large-scale projects of any complexity. In 2016, we continued our practice of setting up ad-hoc teams to pursue specific individual programmes and projects. One such team was launched for our Unified Billing project. We develop tailored reward, training and internal communications systems for every project team according to its profile, objectives and location.
We seek to attract and retain the brightest and most talented people and therefore we offer every opportunity for all members of our team to develop their full potential.
When filling vacancies, we give priority to internal candidates. As part of the organisational transformation, a number of exciting and unique positions were created during 2016. They were mostly filled internally through competitive procedures.
At the same time, we carry out a wide range of initiatives to enhance the Company’s attractiveness as one of the leading employers in the market and we continuously develop channels to source new talent. In particular, in 2016, MegaFon expanded its traditional range of candidate communication tools to include a webpage at icanchoose.ru, a web portal showcasing job opportunities to young talent http://icanchoose.ru/company/megafon/.
During the reporting period, we started selecting new employees to support growth in promising areas such as digital solutions, big data analytics, etc., which will keep us at the leading edge of technology over the longer term. We launch complex and exciting projects which are unique in many aspects and enable us to offer the industry’s best talent entirely new opportunities for their development.
In 2016, the Company launched a recruitment service using a SAP HR solution. The solution helped us streamline the entire hiring process, from application submission and vacancy posting, to preparing an offer for a candidate. The solution is integrated with external websites such as hh.ru, superjob.com, megafon.ruWe are negotiating the development of a SAP HR mobile application. The service has enabled the automation and optimisation of processes related to talent recruitment and hiring.
Talent retention and motivation is a key factor for the Company. We believe that an environment encouraging the professional and personal development of every employee is a key motivational tool. We provide fair remuneration and ensure that all of our personnel have all the support they need to find the opportunities that best utilise their skills, knowledge and talents.
MegaFon’s motivation system includes both monetary and non-monetary rewards, ranging from bonuses and social benefit payments, to development programmes, professional skill competitions, and awards and rewards to recognise professional excellence.
Remuneration
The remuneration scheme at MegaFon is comprised of a number of components, tailored to each function, with a focus on business needs. Our approach to remuneration is guided by our commitment to offer competitive salaries based on market and internal benchmarks. The Company develops a KPI framework to drive clear target-setting and track performance. In 2016, salaries grew 3% on average.
Our compensation package includes two basic components: fixed and variable and we ensure that both parts of the compensation package are well-balanced. MegaFon follows the principle that bonus opportunities should increase in line with an employee’s level of seniority.
Due to unfavourable economic conditions in 2016, the Company decided to change the remuneration scheme for employees receiving annual bonuses. A certain portion of the annual bonus was included in the fixed part of the employees’ monthly salary to make it more stable.
In addition to the fixed salary, flexible bonus schemes were developed for different functions based on business goals and individual targets. A separate incentive scheme is in place for each of the following groups of employees: front-line staff in our retail and corporate businesses, the management team, and staff of our technical and support functions. The employee remuneration structure is balanced and comparable across functions.
Recognition
In addition to remuneration, we use nonmonetary motivational tools to reward our employees and recognise their contribution to the Company’s development. In particular, employees can receive the following rewards:
Information about rewards and competition winners is published without delay on the MegaNet intranet portal for other employees to know about the achievements of their colleagues.
MegaFon operates in a dynamic, ever changing industry where employee training is essential for remaining competitive. In 2016, our priorities were:
Focusing on these priorities, we strived to offer our employees broader opportunities for self-development and for sharing advanced knowledge and best practices with team members.
In 2016, external programmes for professional and corporate training were provided for 4,559 employees. MegaFon invested nearly RUB 131m on external training programmes for its employees in the same year.
MegaAcademy corporate university
MegaAcademy, our corporate university, continues to develop as an expert platform for employee training in project management, business development and personal performance. MegaAcademy offers training programmes for every employee, from the frontline staff to top executives. In addition, MegaAcademy is engaged in research activities and stays in close contact with function leaders to make the training process as effective as possible and maintain its focus on the Company’s goals.
In 2016, MegaAcademy trained 117,455 people (1) , including 23,394 employees of third party dealers and partners. If the same services had been ordered from external providers, they would have cost MegaFon more than RUB 1.3bn.
Last year, 7,000 people were trained via webinars. The most in-demand training programmes in 2016 were The Art of Public Speaking, Turning a Problem into a Result, and Cross-Functional Interaction. These programmes are aimed at developing skills around finding creative solutions and establishing comprehensive approaches to working.
In the autumn of 2016, the Company launched a Trainers’ School programme, focused on the continuous improvement of MegaAcademy trainers’ competencies.
In 2016, MegaFon launched two management
training programmes developed by trainers
from Telefónica’s corporate university
in association with MegaAcademy. The
programmes involved 150 senior executives
and managers representing all of MegaFon’s
functions, branches and subsidiaries.
The first programme was "Transformational
voyage”. The goal of this programme was
to discuss global trends in the telecoms
industry, disruptive innovations and the
principles of design thinking. The participants
also studied a change model in Telefónica
and discussed the best practice case studies
in leadership and value management.
The second programme was MegaFon
Leadership where participants worked
to shape a common vision for the personal
qualities a leader should have in order to
build a high performance team. They also
studied new approaches to effective team
leadership and established the next steps
to develop the management team.
Many ideas touched upon during the training course were later implemented by MegaFon.
Training through external providers
In addition to training courses provided by the corporate university, MegaFon organises employee training through external providers. We keep investing in training employees to work with communications equipment and software, as well as developing business competencies in innovations. Much attention is paid to training employees in project management, particularly in agile methods like Scrum and Kanban.
As part of big data development, we engage the best educational service providers with extensive expertise in this field, to train MegaFon employees. We also support our employees participating in conferences and forums on the latest industry trends.
In 2016, MegaAcademy and the corporate university of Telefónica launched a strategic partnership on two training programmes for company managers – A Transformational Voyage and MegaFon Team Leadership.
Distance training
In 2016, we concentrated on the development of remote training. As part of this effort, MegaAcademy launched a new area of research, development of remote training programmes, and developed 20 courses on the Company’s key products and services during the year. By the end of 2016, over 40,000 active users were registered with Competentum, our corporate remote training system. The efficiency and convenience of remote training are appreciated by both employees and customers.
At the same time, MegaFon continues to expand the range of self-education opportunities for its employees. The Company maintains MyBook, a corporate digital library of professional and business literature. Employees have access to video lessons and lectures from major business schools, experts and trainers via the Eduson platform and have an opportunity to study English online. In late 2016, MegaFon and the Harvard Business Review launched a joint online project to give company employees free access to all of the materials published on the magazine’s website.
Internal communications is key to running our business. MegaFon’s team includes over 30,000 people operating across the country in locations thousands of kilometres apart. Therefore, ensuring fast and efficient cooperation among all employees is crucial for the Company’s success.
In 2016, we continued to further develop our internal communications system. The primary purpose of this system is to provide every employee with a clear view of all the key projects undertaken by the Company, and its corporate objectives and goals, in order to give them a sense of belonging to a wider team and the opportunity to see and measure their personal contribution to our common cause.
To this end, in 2016, we began practicing integrated communications, expanded the range of our communication tools and switched to integrated coverage of projects and media planning. The Company maintains a number of different internal communications channels, including the Our MegaFon magazine that is being actively developed in line with the most up-to-date trends as a tool to communicate our new strategic agenda. In 2016, we refined the Goals and Results section of our corporate MegaNet web portal. This provides every employee with an opportunity to track performance against targets by year and goal, and watch media presentations from in-house experts on the Company’s financial and operating results.
From kick-off, every project now has its own targeted mailing list. At the end of the previous year, we started using messengers within project teams to ensure faster communication flows.
Every year, we launch a series of campaigns to support MegaFon’s key projects. Our priorities in 2016 were linked to the implementation of major federal-level projects such as Unified Billing and the launch of "Pikta" Centre, which involved a wide range of experts from across the Company. At the same time, all in-house communication channels widely covered the launches of our key projects including 5G, bank card, eMotion application, VoLTE, etc.
Unified Billing
In 2016, we focused on further mobilising support for the implementation of our Unified Billing project from all of our business functions. We used a variety of communication formats from management’s formal statements at large meetings with employees, to the latest presentation techniques such as scribing. The Company launched personalised digests for all project stakeholders, developed branded and distinguishing signs for project team members, and held events to highlight the milestones of the project. This programme helped us improve the motivation and commitment of project participants, ensure engagement among employees, and make the project transparent to everyone.
Shared Services Centre
We ran a major campaign to improve employee engagement and promote the Shared Service Centre project within the Company. We launched a dedicated information resource – a project diary, and used short movies, blogs, print and online materials. We developed a corporate style, and solutions for interactive dashboards and QR Code Communications.
Corporate strategy
In mid-2016, the Company started developing a new corporate strategy, another important topic widely covered in our communications. To communicate the key messages of the strategy we produced a series of short films featuring the Company’s managers and utilised various communication channels: Our MegaFon magazine, a web platform at MegaNet web portal, a special bulletin on the purpose of the strategy, and presentations during video conferencing for employees across the Group.
SAP re-engineering
The launch of the SAP re-engineering project renewed our focus on general information sharing among all employees and the provision of permanent communication channels for project participants. At the end of 2016, employees were introduced to some new resources that we developed in collaboration with the SAP team: namely the project’s corporate style, intranet web site, and an electronic publication.
We are committed to fostering a communal culture of information exchange focused on our corporate values through, inter alia, informal events and celebrations. In 2016, MegaFon arranged a joint New Year celebration in Moscow for employees from the head office, the Moscow branch and Moscow offices of various subsidiaries, which helped us create a communal atmosphere before the re-location of all employees from the head office and branches into our new office building. We traditionally celebrate Company Day, Communications Workers’ Day and other holidays. The Company also supports launches of its new key products with in-house events: for example, in 2016, we celebrated the launch of MegaFon bank card. We strongly believe that such initiatives promote the development of our corporate culture and enhance team spirit.
