PhosAgro will index the salaries of its employees

Apatit (part of PhosAgro) will index the wages of its employees. The employer will also retain all existing mechanisms of motivation and encouragement, including payments for professional holidays. This decision was made during the meeting of representatives of trade unions of Apatit and the company’s management.

The meeting, which was held in the video conferencing format and brought together all PhosAgro enterprises, was attended by the heads of trade union organizations of enterprises united in the Association of Trade Unions named Minudobreniya, directors for personnel and social policy, for health, safety and the environment, and for information policy.

The General Director of Apatit Alexander Gilgenberg opened the working meeting. He reported on the current position of the company in the industry and in the global market in general. Thanks to the efforts of workers, the company managed to exceed the production plan of last year by more than 5% and produced over 10 million tons of mineral fertilizers. The plan for 2021 is even more ambitious — 10.3 million tons of products.

Alexander Gilgenberg thanked the employees, noting that the team works in a friendly and united manner amid the pandemic. He also noticed the advantages of a remuneration system, which reflects the labor success of employees.

The last indexation of wages was in 2018. Then the company took a course to develop a motivation system. Apatit also introduced a bonus system with payments for two professional holidays — Miner’s Day and Chemist’s Day. In 2020, these two bonus payments together amounted to 40 thousand rubles (about $550). And the average level of wages increased by 9% over two years.

“The issue of salary increasing is a subject of constant negotiations with the trade union. The policy of our company provides for stimulating the growth of wages by increasing labor productivity. Therefore, the salary of employees who fulfill the plan and comply with the requirements of the labor safety system is regularly growing. To make this system even more effective, we are actively developing and improving additional mechanisms for increasing the monetary remuneration of certain categories of employees,” said Alexander Gilgenberg.

According to his statement, the company maintains the remuneration rate for all professions involved in production at the competitive level. Besides, all social policy commitments and benefits are maintained as well.

Over the past three years, more than 100 changes have been made to the compensation and benefit policy and the system of motivation programs. The total financial expression of these changes amounted to 805 million rubles (about $11.1 million). However, indexation is currently needed to keep pace with changes in prices in the consumer market.

“During the meeting, it was decided to maintain the current system of financial incentives and introduce wages indexation from September 1, 2021. Salaries of administrative and managerial personnel will be increased by 3%, and salaries of production personnel by 4%,” said the Chairman of the Minudobreniya Association of Trade Unions, Denis Brodkov. “At the same time, I’d like to note that the welfare of workers is increasing not only due to the growth of wages, there are also collective agreements, which provide employees with a high level of social protection.”

The approval of new collective agreements at PhosAgro enterprises took place last summer and became one of the mechanisms for additional social protection of workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new collective agreements expand the list of benefits and guarantees and increase the amount of social payments. The total amount of financial security for guarantees under collective agreements increased by 3% and reached 1.1 billion rubles (approximately $15.2 million).

Some other issues were also discussed during the meeting. Apatit’s HR and Social Policy Director, Margarita Kotlyarova answered the questions of employees regarding remuneration, motivation and work schedule. Workers are interested in how changes the workflow amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, more than 3.5 thousand people were transferred to remote work. Over a thousand people will continue to work remotely.

Deputy Director of Apatit on social policy, Dmitry Kalyukov reported on the current trends in the development of social policy. The company will focus on programs to improve and maintain the health of workers and on the creation of a more flexible system of benefits that takes into account the interests of different groups of workers. The company will also develop volunteer activities, motivation for activists of the social life of the enterprise and closer interaction of the social service with the trade unions.