Education Of Personnel As The Most Important Factor Of Sustainable Development

Abstract

The paper substantiates the institutional prerequisites for reproduction of workforce capacity of public and municipal administration. It is emphasized for local self-government authorities, which are in fact an implementation mechanism of at least three most important social-legal phenomena: firstly, municipal administration, secondly, municipal service, and thirdly, municipal personnel policy. Special attention is paid to problems, dealing with the professional education of municipal personnel and their competence, necessary for providing the sustainable social-economic development of municipalities and regions. This indicates the demand for competency-based approach to training, evaluation and professional development of managerial human resources in municipal units. In conditions of formation and development of digital economy, requirements to the quality of work and training of municipal employees and people in managerial employee pools considerably grow, which dictates the need for making preemptive managerial decisions in the process of training and promoting the professionally trained staff. So, we believe that the problem and topicality of our research is deter-mined with the necessity to create scientifically-based forms, methods and personnel technologies, which would provide in the course of their functioning the achievement of strategical indices in social-economic development of territories, which would significantly contribute to solving this problematic situation.

Keywords: Keywords: Competency-based approach, local community, personnel policy, professional knowledge, reproduction of workforce capacity, sociological studies

Introduction

In the present-day Russia in the 21st century one of the essential tasks is reproduction of workforce capacity of public and municipal administration. This is especially important for local self-government authorities, which are in fact an implementation mechanism of at least three most important social-legal phenomena: firstly, municipal administration, secondly, municipal service, and thirdly, municipal personnel policy. The three levels of scientific analysis of these phenomena are: theories, methodologies and technologies, and in general the municipal science allows having a holistic view on the municipal world and municipal units through the prism of staffing (personnel policy) and revealing the main source of local communities’ self-development (Astakhov & Patrushev, 2014). The reforms, which are being implemented in the Russian Federation, require innovative and well-thought-out decisions and systemic and consistent activities from regulatory and administrative authorities. This requirement is fully applied to personnel policy in municipal administration system. In conditions of municipal administration system reformation nowadays the need for training municipal employees and people in managerial employee pools, their acquiring of new professional knowledge and skills within the framework of earlier achieved educational levels (bachelor’s, specialist’s and master’s degree programs) takes on a new urgency. Characteristically, the top-priority goal of personnel policy is creating in all municipal units of the Russian Federation a continuous system of professional development and further improvement of personnel technologies, organizing mechanisms (within the framework of local budgets) of financing the professional training, retraining, qualification upgrading, preemptive education of municipal officers, deputies and specialists of local administration.

Problem Statement

In this context it is especially important to implement in the municipal practice the principle of professionalism and qualification upgrading. A characteristic feature of any modern state (society), aimed at prosperity, is the education, from the preliminary education and to the qualification upgrading of certified specialists. It is the principle of management, of management as it is, that explicitly requires the obligatory qualification upgrading of all specialists, involved in the operating process, independently of the position held; in this case, of municipal personnel. In this regard it should be pointed out that the education process of a person is not simple, it starts since their birth and continues throughout the person’s life. But the intensity of acquiring knowledge, so amazing in childhood years, considerably decreases in the period of a per-son’s intellectual and physical peak (Lola, 2013). This is confirmed by the studies of Knorring, who presents the diagram of knowledge perception rate and the relative development of skills depending on the age, which reflects the multi-year research of sociologists and psychologists (Izoylova, 2016).

In this regard we consider it necessary to look into the international practices of solving such problems. Thus, for example, the major companies and enterprises of Europe, USA, Japan, China, insistently, sparing no expenses, carry out a policy of the total qualification upgrading and retraining of personnel, especially top managers, which have creative potential in implementing the designated goals. Only in the USA about 150 higher education institutions car-ry out a targeted training and qualification upgrading of managers. It should be noted that in 2015 in the USA over 60 billion dollars were spent for all forms of managerial training. We are falling behind in this aspect.

Research Questions

Aristotle begins his «Metaphysics» with a point that all people by nature reach after knowledge, and the sources of knowledge, as it is known, are feelings and memory, which together form the experience. We assume that the pre-emptive education of personnel according to the third-generation standards, in our opinion, embodies the emotional memory and the professional back-ground, which these specialists would later be able to transform into the professional knowledge.

Purpose of the Study

So, it is necessary to continuously acquire professional knowledge (especially for top managers of executive-administrative and representative bodies of municipal administration), as well as to continuously renew the toolkit of managerial, personnel, informational-analytical and digital technologies, aimed at human resourcing of the sustainable social and economic development of municipal units.

Research Methods

Sociological surveys of municipal employees and respondents were conducted to carry out research. A literary review of the experience of applying educational programs in the sociology of management has been carried out. Various methods for comparing the obtained statistical data were also used. A socio-logical assessment of managerial personnel has been carried out.

Findings

The practice of municipal construction has found gaps in the Federal legislation about local self-government and municipal service. Thus, for the recent 10 years we have witnessed the shortage of highly-qualified professional personnel. This point was confirmed by sociological research of the main problems in the municipal personnel policy, which we carried out in the city of Belgorod (Astakhov et al., 2014) (see Table 01).

As we can see, this survey and its findings demonstrate that, first of all, the municipal employees are concerned about such problems as shortage of qualified personnel (39,35 %), red tape (36,13 %) and high employee turnover (33,55 %). This research has also allowed identifying the main problems, which hinder carrying out the professional activity of municipal personnel. Firstly, it is the low level of wages (46,45 %), secondly, insufficient funding of the sphere (37,42 %), and thirdly, imperfection of normative legal base (30,32 %) (see Table 02).

We think that the first two problems were expectable. And the fact that every fourth municipal employee of those, who took part in this research, mentioned the imperfection of normative legal base, indicates that the local self-government authorities of Belgorod still lack the normative consolidation of procedures and technologies. As a result, we see manifestation of an adverse trend in terms of performing of their professional activities by the municipal employees, which was expressed in the reluctance to take the responsibility for managerial decisions in the areas, in which they are still not properly regulated, i.e. are not legitimized (MAI Institute, 2012).

So we think that the practical solving of this problem is associated both with transformation of local self-government authorities functioning, and with strengthening of human resource potential in its system. For the national re-nascence of present-day Russia, which is undoubtedly possible only through the establishment of a mature civil society and its local structures, it is necessary to set in motion all the resources of its political system. One of the key re-sources is, undoubtedly, the personnel resource. The reasonable usage of the suggested and systematized personnel technologies would allow, in our opinion, considerably increasing the efficiency of municipal administration, and channeling the efforts of the personnel to optimization of means to achieve public purposes for meeting the multiple social needs of people and harmonization of social relations in the society in general.

In this regard it should be noted that the topical issue is implementation of innovative technologies, associated with providing the preemptive education of personnel according to the third-generation standards, into the operational practice of municipal authorities, business structures, companies, enterprises and organizations of various organizational legal forms of property. Solving this problem is one of the key problems of education in general and «gives a clue» to forming the structure and content of educational programs of the future, including the education of public and municipal employees and business representatives in the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, in the Belgorod State National Research University (NRU «BelSU»), in the Institute of Economics and Management of Belgorod State Technological University named after V.G. Shukhov, and in higher education institutions of the Central Federal District.

Consequently, in our opinion, the professional knowledge and permanent education of personnel at the interface of cognate disciplines (economics, political science, human resources management, sociology, history, philosophy) is to a great extent made possible by the further development of forms, methods and innovative training programs, which, in their turn, should in-crease the flexibility and efficiency of educational (intramural, extramural, re-mote) process. And in this context the prioritized competency-based approach to training and retraining of managerial personnel, sociological evaluation of their professional level and providing their further professional advancement takes on particular significance.

The competency-based approach to reproduction of workforce capacity of municipal administration in present-day conditions has gained widespread use both in Russia, and internationally (Japan, USA, China, Great Britain etc.). We think that this indicates the demand for competency-based approach to training, evaluation and professional development of managerial human re-sources in municipal units (Zakharov, 2016).

Conclusion

So, we can see that in the new Russia in the 21st century the prerequisites are being created for the further science-based professional education of personnel, which would fill the constitutional principles of its formation with real content according to third-generation standards.

So, based on the above stated, we can make the following conclusions. Firstly, in present-day conditions education of personnel should be considered as a most important factor of the successful and sustainable social and economic development of municipal units, regions of the Russian Federation.

Secondly, it is an efficient instrument of workforce capacity reproduction, and can be useful and promising for the successful continuation of implementing the administrative and municipal reforms in the present-day Russia.

Thirdly, in conditions of the continuing reformation of public and municipal service in the Russian Federation, the education and efficient use of graduates (bachelors, specialists, masters, postgraduate students) would provide the regulatory and administrative authorities with highly-qualified personnel, as it is one of the determining factors of human resources retention, continuity of personnel and eliminating many crisis developments in the sphere of market economy, social sector and in the personnel policy.

Acknowledgments

The authors express special thanks to Nikolay Semenovich Danakin, doctor of sociology, professor, director of Research and Development Institute of Synergetics of BSTU named after V. G. Shukhov, to Mikhail Alexandrovich Ignatov – doctor of philosophy, professor, to Sergey Andreevich Bozhenov – candidate of sociology, associate professor, human resources policy advisor of the Rector of BSTU named after V.G. Shukhov, Sergey Nikolaevich Glagolev, for their positive feedback and practical suggestions, which were a great help in preparing and writing this research paper.

References

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• Izoylova, I. (2016). How many rankings Russia needs. Russian newspaper, 72. www.rg.ru

• Lola, А. М. (2013). Urban and agglomeration authorities in Russia: current state and what to do. KANON+ RSDP and Rehabilitation.

• MAI Institute. (2012). Efficiency evaluation of municipal personnel policy of Belgorod. Informational-analytical report summarizing the results of sociological research, June 18 – July 30. MAI Institute of municipal develop-ment and social technologies.

• Zakharov, V. М. (2016). Renovation system of professional potential reproduction as a condition for providing an efficient regional governance [Monograph]. Belgorod: ID “Belgorod”; “NRU BelSU”.