PRESS: Russia’s VimpelCom to switch up to 70% of staff to remote job

MOSCOW, Jun 27 (PRIME) -- Russian mobile operator VimpelCom, working under the Beeline brand, will transfer 50–70% of its personnel to partial remote work outside the office until the end of 2017 as it optimizes its labor force across the country, business daily Kommersant reported Monday.

Yelena Yeshilova, organizational development director at VimpelCom, said the operator started testing a so-called project BeeFREE at the end of 2015. The project engaged up to 300 employees, who partially switched to remote work. In the morning they made a to-do-list of what they wanted to do during the day, and the test showed 92% of successful cases.

VimpelCom then polled the participants of the project, and 64% of employees said their effectiveness did not change, Yeshilova said.

The company’s 800 employees in Moscow and 1,500 people in regions signed an amendment to their contracts allowing them to join the BeeFREE project. Those employees who work with large volumes of documents or special equipment cannot joint the project.

VimpelCom will reduce rented office space by third thanks to the initiative. “However, the main reason is to teach employees to work for result, improve the level of the company’s digitalization and win the battle for talents: to become a more attractive and innovative employer ahead of the staff crisis of the 2020s, when a consecutive fall in workforce is seen because of the 1990s birth rate crisis,” Yeshilova said.

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