7th topic. Managing ralent They say all people are talented but not all of them know themselves enough. As a chief accountant I had such experience to hire staff and I remember our HR paid a lot of attention on how to spot raw talent, he used many tools, managing fight and overlap battle are part of them. Candidates then need to be inducted on the key factors of business system, applicable IT systems, corporate culture and their responsibilities according to their role. Now I work for a company that recruits highly skilled IT specialists. Though the company provides training of negotiation and managerial skills I don't see that HR department develops capabilities of newcomers, it's mostly their vertical boss's responsibility. We have an annual performance assessment and it's compulsory for particular positions. As our company has 1200 employees it's reasonable to have such opportunity for improvement as job rotation. 360-degree analysis is also carried out in the company but not for all employees and not so frequently. I know about current HR's activity to develop the road-map for each position in the company, the aim is to show employees what capabilities are required for their career move for each position oh their path (in their field of expertise ), which options for job rotation they have. Of course I'm interested in this road-map. As for project managers we have only description of capabilities necessary to be promoted from one grade to higher grade but career path of strategic project manager to executive management is unclear yet...

6th topic. Work-Life balanse. Would you please correct me? Work of a project manager is quite stressful. As for me it's much better then being relaxed the whole day or being boring. I even remember HR said results of test show I will always be looking for difficulties, challenges... I have never had stress-related illness, moreover I become highly concentrated in stress.. I like this feeling. But I can suffer burn-out because of office politics, lack of management support, effort-reward imbalance and home-work imbalance. Work-life balance is not an issue of time management only, there is something that makes people to be workaholic and think about very little except work. What I would change in my schedule is to get 1 or 2 days a week flexible, I mean to consider by myself to commute to the office or stay at home on these days. It would allow me to pay more attention to my son or to go fitness in the evening. But I would never thought of being homeworker or downshifting. That's not for me. I like independence but I also won't feel myself isolated. I am extravert and like to share my ideas with someone. So I wonder how my friend is downshifting now, she doesn't have any job, she just travels around the world with her husband having leased her two flats.. after being an auditor for several years ..

5th topic. Flexibility and inflexibility. Would you be so kind to correct me? In comparison with US and France I suggest we are somewhere in the middle. We have flexible working, for example temporary workers, temporary contracts, part time workers. But we don’t have such job flexibility as in US letting people go. If the employer decided to fire the employee and it’s only employer’s reason such as reorganization or staff reduction employee must be notified 2 months in advance and he is paid 3 months salary as redundancy payments. Unemployment benefits are not paid by the company, unemployed has tо register on the labor exchange to get paid. Compared to European countries the amount of money is not enough to live on them, so the only right attitude to redundancy is to find a new job quickly before company gets rid of employee. But if company doesn’t have such reasons and it’s only employee’s fault that company doesn’t need in him company can’t give a short notice “you are fired”, procedures proving a violation of the employee of labor regulations must be met. Generally this situation is resolved through negotiations and employee writes a letter of resignation at own will. But if he disagrees it becomes company’s problem to prove to labor committee that this employee must be fired. We have sick pay, 28 day vacation and maternity leave. Social charges which employer has to pay from the wage fund are 22% to Pension fund, 5.1% to Medicine fund and 2.1% to Social insurance fund. Employee doesn’t pay social charges to government. The official data about average unemployment rate are 5.8% in the last year with lowest unemployment in Moscow 1.5% and highest rate in Ingushetia – more than 20%. I know no one who believes in these data but I have no friends who are unemployed.

Fourth topic. Employment and employability. Could you please correct me? Employment and employability The staffs of our company mostly commute to the office, but I know a few analysts and programmers which do their work in-house one or two days a week or even entire week. They say this approach has benefits for employees – they have a job for life, more free time to spend with their family – and for the company – they get loyalty of employees and cost-effectiveness. However we don’t have outsourced and offshore companies there are contactors and freelancers who are agree to accomplish very specific work, data conversion or modifications of our product for particular customer when those modifications couldn’t be used for all of our customers. Our company put a lot of emphasis on professional development, that’s why corporate educational center organizes training courses for project managers, for salesmen, for heads of product, many courses are conducted by external coaches. I support the point of view that it’s a must to keep up with current trends so our heads introduced the process when project managers department and production department share to the heads with new trends in the market – methodologies and techniques such as Devops or demand management, etc. Up-to-date skills and lifelong learning allows employee being always employable. That means competitive edge and a chance to make career move. There are no freelancers or portfolio workers among my colleagues and friends. But we know two ex-employees who set up on their own and nowadays they offer consultancy services and modifications of our company’s products.

Third topic. Management styles. I would be glad to get your corrections/part 2 As for motivator factors I would say there is always place for improvements. Implementation of the banking systems couldn’t be very creative or innovative to give a sense of personal growth in every month, the work itself is repetitive even when you run a project implementing unique product, because project management techniques are the same. Heads of the company began a new process of picking up information about new trends in our field of expertise and involved subordinates to participate in this activity. So now I’m responsible for presenting new trends in project management on the Committee. That motivates me, that’s something creative for me. Practice named as 10/1 allows all subordinates to get honest feedback (not always positive actually) from their vertical head and to receive recognition for their achievements. But as I noticed working for the company for more than 3 years it’s difficult to get advancement, all positions are pretty stable even after the reorganization. It will take you time to go up the career ladder may be that’s why we have staff who work for the company more than 10 years. Our company has matrix structure, there are also product teams under the team leaders and the heads of the product, project teams under the project managers, so I don’t see opportunities for empowerment and delegation, all staff has their responsibilities according to their roles but not the position, so if you don’t have administrator or team leader on the particular project there is nothing to delegate the executors because quality and customer requirements can’t be controlled whether they have been met or not by executors themselves. Reorganization was conducted in the company 2 years ago to make company less hierarchical so decisions are made nowadays more quickly.

Third topic. Management styles. I would be so pleased if you corrected me/ Part 1 Management styles 2 Of course I support an idea of impact of hygiene and motivator factors on our effectiveness, productivity, involvement and job satisfaction. As for hygiene factors our company supposed to provide high level compared to the other IT companies on the market. For example supervision is good enough to keep things under control but without breathing down ones neck. The company has annual and quarterly goals so we are well aware of company’s policy and have enough level of security about the future of our job. Working conditions and salary such as flexible schedule of working day, the compensations for mortgage interests, fitness and lunch has competitive advantage. As for peer relations it is quite comfortable to relate to my colleagues. Perhaps thanks to the fact that many of the staff are from different cities and towns of Russia and there are no mentality “you are strangers, you are different”, perhaps thanks to our resulted-oriented bonuses and our motivation to complete the project as soon as possible. There is an interesting fact also – many ex-employees that had left company once upon a time, jointed to it again. This is a key point of good level of job satisfaction of the staff.

Second topic. Management styles. I have an experience of being head of department and having 10 subordinates, I mean accountants and financial specialists working under me. Despite the fact that accountant’s responsibilities itself are routine and there is nothing to use your creativity staff of my department didn’t need constant supervision, they were well disciplined. But my previous boss was authoritarian, he liked disciplinary procedures, detailed description of all business processes, prefered command-and-control style and always trained top managers that decisions must be imposed from above without consultation. Now I work for IT company with matrix structure. As a project manager I involved in a project team work, from initiation stage of the project to the go live. Command-and-control management style is not relevant to our corporate culture. More over SCRUM that is a one of the technique of AGILE methodology is introduced in the company and used in the customer projects. That assumes that project manager and team lead have to pay much attention to empowerment, motivation of team members, improve their leadership skills. Hierarchy in the project doesn’t influence on morale atmosphere, because encouraged management style for PM is participative where employees take part in decision making process. By the way it’s beneficial for PM to involve experts. Value principles of AGILE such as learning, communication, simplicity, transparency, collaboration that we encourage in team work are relevant to a general feeling of well-being on the company.

there are few topics for HW so I'll be happy if you correct me. Job satisfaction is the first one. Job Satisfaction I’m a project manager in IT company that is vendor of a banking system. It seems I’m not such a creative person as designer but I’m always come up with ideas to our heads on how to improve management techniques for our projects. Putting my ideas into practice is what stimulates and rewards me. I don’t like paper work and I remember the time of being chained to a desk when I was a chief accountant. I don't like bureaucracy and red tape so PM is more dynamic job. Project and teamwork, tough negotiations and sense of achievement when I do something new even if being snowed under are all parts of my job satisfaction nowadays. It’s easy for me to get on well with customers, I pay much attention for relationships and ethic. I like to keep all things under control, and if subordinate (team member inside company) is not well disciplined I‘m ready to breath down his neck. Being PM is quite stressful but there is flexibility that our company provides, flexible schedule for example, it’s allowed us to start work not later than 10 am and to go out after 5 pm, average working day has to be not less than 9 hours. PM and implementers, most of the staff have to commute to the office, at the same time analysts, developers can work from home. I get 28 day a year vacation time. As I dislike routine “no two days are the same” is the rule for holidays.