Social support

Collective Bargaining Agreement

Russian Railways’ Collective Bargaining Agreement covers 100% of the Company’s employees and is an important motivation tool within its recruitment and retention framework.

In 2022, a new Collective Bargaining Agreement of Russian Railways for 2023–2025 was signed. It provides for the same guarantees and obligations towards the Company’s employees, their families, veterans, and retirees as the previous agreement.

Russian Railways’ Collective Bargaining Agreement for 2023–2025:

• increases financial assistance in excess of the allowance established by the Russian laws in the event of the birth of a child (or adoption of a child):
  • RUB 5,775 in 2023,
  • RUB 6,050 in 2024,
  • RUB 6,300 in 2025
• increases monthly allowance for those on leave to care for a child aged 1.5 to 3 years:
  • RUB 5,775 in 2023,
  • RUB 6,050 in 2024,
  • RUB 6,300 in 2025
• increases to RUB 10,000 the financial assistance provided to formerly conscripted personnel who return to their work in the Company. This applies to the workers who are re‑employed by Russian Railways within three months of their discharge from military service.

Overall, Russian Railways delivered on its obligations for 2023 under the Collective Bargaining Agreement 2023–2025, meaning the Company maintained its status as a socially responsible employer. There were no collective labour disputes. The decisions on securing employment and personnel earnings ensured social stability among employees.

Social support of employees

As a socially responsible employer, Russian Railways offers an extended social package in the following areas.

Basic social package:

• free annual travel by public railway transport for employees and their dependent children up to 18 years of age:
  • o for personal needs on long‑haul trains,
  • o from the place of residence to the place of work or study and back,
  • o from the place of residence to the place of medical treatment and back,
  • o from the place of residence to the place where goods can be purchased for family needs – for employees living at stations, passing loops, or transport stops not covered by retailers;

• financial support for motherhood and childhood:
  • o supplement to the maternity allowance to raise the total payment to the average monthly earnings,
  • o financial assistance in excess of the allowance established by laws in the event of the birth of a child (or adoption of a child),
  • o monthly allowance for those on leave to care for a child aged 1.5 to 3 years;

• voluntary health insurance;
• supporting employees in need of household fuel;
• financial assistance for those taking an annual paid leave;
• accident insurance of children during their stay in children’s recreational camps;
• lump‑sum remuneration for diligent work upon retirement;
• guarantees and benefits when an employee is discharged;
• employee insurance providing for payments to families of deceased employees.

Co‑financed social package:

• private pension plans;
• health resort treatment and recreation for employees and their family members;
• providing places for employees’ children in educational institutions established by the Company;
• corporate support for those acquiring their own housing;
• financial compensation for the cost of fitness sessions.

Compensated social package:

• An employee can be refunded, within a certain limit, for their expenses related to social services included on an approved list.

Bonus package:

• Financial and non‑financial incentives through the mechanism of accrual and exchange of bonus points for activity, involvement in solving corporate tasks, or participation in important corporate projects. Employees can spend the bonus points they have earned on corporate offers made available on the website of Vitrina, a digital platform for railway workers mp.rzd.ru.

In 2023, to ensure the effective development of the Company’s social policy, Russian Railways’ managers and professionals involved in social projects were offered to take part in a multi‑tiered professional development programme titled A New Look at the Social Policy, with more than 100 employees having completed the training by the end of 2023.

Platform of social and HR services

Russian Railways launched the Vitrina digital platform enabling its employees to remotely redeem points from their bonus packages, receive unique product and service offers from partners, and buy services at social infrastructure facilities.

In 2023, we unveiled the Pulse corporate sports app where users can learn about the Company’s events, participate in them or create their own events, and find like‑minded people for doing sports or competing in friendly tournaments.

Dynasties of railway workers

In 2023, Russian Railways approved its first Regulations on Railway Worker Dynasties Russian Railways’ Order No. 1051/r dated 2 May 2023. , which sets out the key criteria for dynasties, the procedure for their inclusion in a unified register, and a set of support measures for such dynasties.

We developed a register of railway worker dynasties, which includes more than 1,000 dynasties and over 8,000 individuals.

Russian Railways also staged a competition for railway worker dynasties and determined winners in the following categories:

• Oldest Dynasty (the greatest length of service since the dynasty’s foundation);
• Dynasty in History (the most numerous dynasty);
• Generational Continuity (the greatest cumulative length of service).

In the Oldest Dynasty category, the winner was the Gausner dynasty founded on 1 January 1872. The history of this family spans five continuous generations of railway workers. The founder of the dynasty, August Gausner, was awarded the 25 Years of Service badge established by the Moscow–Vindava–Rybinsk Railway Society.

In the Dynasty in History category, the winner was the Golmakov family counting 37 members. The founder of the dynasty is Fyodor Golmakov, a steam locomotive driver with the total service duration of over 40 years. The track record of 13 dynasty members working in railway transportation exceeds 30 years. Most of the dynasty members work on the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM) at Severobaykalsk, Taksimo, Novaya Chara, and Tynda.

In the Generational Continuity category, the winner was the Chemerkin‑Polozkov dynasty with the cumulative service duration of 1,072 years. The dynasty includes six people with over 40 years of service in railway transport and 12 people with more than 30 years of service. Four members were awarded the Honorary Railway Worker badge.

Youth policy

Employees under 35 years of age account for 34.6% of Russian Railways’ total headcount. This makes social support of young talent even more important.

2023 saw over 1,000 activities and projects carried out as part of Russian Railways’ Youth targeted programme (2021–2025) in order to ensure comprehensive development and acquisition of industry‑specific competencies by young employees, engage them in improvement of Russian Railways’ operations, and build a youth‑oriented corporate culture. About 210,000 young employees from across the Group took part in the events.

A key youth event was the the 15th Youth Conference of Russian Railways, which was attended by more than 1,000 young employees, representatives of ten foreign railways, and young employees from 16 state‑owned corporations and large companies. The central topic of the conference was From Past to Future: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow through the Lens of People and Events.

The youth conference proved that regardless of our position, preferences, occupation, or place of work we, the young employees of Russian Railways, are one big family.

Each of us is interesting and unique in our own way, and taken together we drive the outstanding performance of such a vast and extensive industrial group as Russian Railways.

Alexey Zabelin Lead Process Engineer in the Southern High‑Speed Transportation Directorate

Corporate pension system

All of the Company’s employees can benefit from the private corporate pension system. In terms of its goals and purpose, a private (corporate) pension is an additional measure of social support for workers, independent of the state pension system. Its strategic target is to ensure a replacement rate of at least 40% of an employee’s lost earnings.

The key principles of the corporate pension system:

• shared employee/employer contribution to the employee’s future pension;
• full financial security of corporate pensions;
• lifelong payments under the programme.

In 2023, the number of the Company participants to the plan exceeded 566,000. Over 280,000 retired railway workers currently receive corporate pensions in addition to the state ones.

In 2023, pensions were granted to 9,500 Russian Railways employees. The average corporate pension granted in 2023 was RUB 10,179.

Support for non‑employed retirees

The Company’s social responsibility efforts include benefits to senior retirees of railway enterprises not eligible for a private corporate pension.

In 2023, over 54,000 people received monthly financial aid for a total of RUB 546.1 m, with an average payment currently standing at RUB 611.

Non‑employed retirees receive medical care at Russian Railways’ corporate health centres in line with local compulsory health insurance programmes, and high‑cost treatment according to the list of services stipulated by the Company.

Retirees in need can have their household fuel expenses compensated by the Company. In 2023, we covered RUB 576.9 m in household fuel expenses for over 28,000 veterans.

We provide premises, phone connection, and office supplies for veteran councils and arrange for car transportation to visit disabled people and lonely retirees.

Chairpersons of the veteran councils receive monthly financial aid. In 2023, a total of RUB 162.6 m was allocated to support 4,546 council chairpersons and deputy chairpersons.

The Company also provides monthly financial aid to keepers of local and site railway museums. In 2023, a total of RUB 17.1 m was paid to 258 keepers.

The Company holds corporate celebrations of the Victory Day and Day of Older Persons, organises trains to visit the sites of labour and battle glory, and holds workshops to exchange field experience between veteran organisations.

In 2023, the Company provided financial support to 9,000 veterans of the Great Patriotic War, prisoners of concentration camps, and home front workers to mark the Victory Day, with more than RUB 15.4 m allocated for these purposes.

In the reporting year, the Unified Social Operator was in place across the entire railway network to combine the provision of benefits, guarantees, and compensations to Russian Railways retirees through remote services. More than 232,000 non‑employed retirees used the Pensioner Service Portal to receive updates on events and apply for benefits online.

Under the Russian Railways’ Veterans programme, we also help our retirees develop new skills that are essential in the modern world (for example, improving digital, legal, and financial literacy).

Housing policy

The Company cares about the comfort and well‑being of its employees, offering corporate benefits to help improve their living conditions and buy housing:

• reduced mortgage rate of 2–4.5%;
• partial compensation of a subsidised mortgage loan for families with new‑born or adopted children;
• corporate housing for employees of rare and sought‑after professions;
• compensation of up to 70% of rental fees for employees renting third‑party housing;
• subsidies to purchase housing for vulnerable population groups: single parents, multichild families, people with disabilities caused by a workplace injury, and employees who lost their housing as a result of an emergency or a natural disaster.

In 2023, 1,304 employees improved their living conditions with the Company’s support, including:

• 1,297 employees received subsidies for a portion of mortgage loan interest. The subsidies totalled RUB 154.64 m;
• seven employees of certain categories (single parents, large families, and others) received non‑repayable subsidies totalling RUB 20.97 m.
• 1,193 employees received non‑repayable subsidies for the birth of children during the period of subsidised mortgage loan repayment. The subsidies totalled RUB 251.6 m.

As part of the investment project, we built and commissioned a 60‑apartment residential building at the Babayevo station of the October Railway and a 4‑apartment residential building at the Iglino station of the Kuybyshevskaya Railway.

Health protection

Protecting the health of the Company’s employees and enhancing the accessibility and quality of healthcare services for the society are among the top priorities of the corporate social policy. We operate a broad range of RZD‑Medicine healthcare facilities, health resorts, and children’s recreational camps all across Russia, which are available for the Company’s employees and non‑employed retirees.

In 2023, the RZD‑Medicine healthcare network had an outreach of 2.25 m people, of whom 30.6% were Company employees, 13.4% were Russian Railways retirees, and 55.9% were members of local communities.

To keep its employees healthy, the Company implements a wide range of measures, including corporate programmes, annual medical check‑ups for employees, collaboration with the government on pilot projects, and a voluntary health insurance programme for Russian Railways personnel.

Medical check‑ups of Russian Railways employees are held annually and include a broader range of medical examinations compared to the state programme for adult check‑ups.

With the implementation in 2019–2023 of a comprehensive programme aimed at reducing morbidity and preventing mortality from cardiovascular diseases and early detection of oncological diseases among Russian Railways employees, the coverage rate of dispensary monitoring for individuals with cardiovascular diseases reached 87.7% in 2023 (vs the target of at least 82.0%), while the percentage of early‑stage (I–II) malignant tumour detection came in at 77.8% (vs the target of at least 68.0%). The overall coverage of the Company’s employees by medical check‑ups was 99.1% (vs the target of at least 98.0%).

Jointly with Evogen, we implemented a project to identify genetic risks of chronic non‑communicable diseases among Russian Railways employees, with a total of 2,000 workers examined.

Efforts are underway to optimise the routing of critical patients and to introduce advanced healthcare technologies such as artificial intelligence for analysing medical images and detecting subtle pathologies or a robotised stereotactic assistant for interventional treatment.

Year of Health

Russian Railways designated 2023 as the corporate Year of Health in an effort to strengthen employee health and increase the proportion of workers sticking to the healthy lifestyle principles.

Key events

• Nationwide Health Train: Together Against Diabetes awareness campaign. For more details, see the Local Communities and Charity section
• Health Days at the Company’s facilities featuring lectures by leading doctors, distribution of handouts on healthy lifestyles, and screening tests. Over the year, 1,500 Company sites were visited, with 48,000 employees examined. Various early‑stage diseases were identified for the first time in nearly 2% of the employees.
• Medical outreach campaign. For more details, see the Local Communities and Charity section
• Sports events featured the LocoWinter and LocoSummer healthy lifestyle festivals for families, as well as 14 fitness tours attended by over 150,000 people.
• A psychological assistance hotline was established, with the Company’s professionals providing anonymous support in addressing various issues such as conflicts, stress, depression, emotional burnout, difficulties integrating into the team, crises, etc.

Blood donation is a tool for ordinary caring people to make a difference in this world and save the lives of other people.

Our corporate donation campaigns help engage new donors, and spark genuine interest and a desire to learn more about blood donation.

Blood donation events staged by the Company not only directly support the national healthcare system and military hospitals, but also strengthen relationships and understanding among colleagues from various business units, as a large number of employees of different professions visit campaigns hosted by the neighbouring directorates and branches and feel warmly welcomed.

Donating blood is a way to show that you care!

Elena Zhidkova Head of the Central Healthcare Directorate

Occupational medicine

223 medical assessment boards, 1,500 pre‑trip medical check‑up offices, and 235 psychophysiological units are in place at RZD‑Medicine private healthcare facilities. In line with the relevant work plans, the medical assessment boards completed 1.79 m mandatory medical examinations and 29 m mandatory pre‑trip (pre‑shift) medical check‑ups in 2023, with over 90% of them performed automatically.

The Company constantly strives to improve the quality of healthcare services for traffic and occupational safety. For several years running, Russian Railways has been working to open occupational pathology and occupational suitability centres at the healthcare facilities of RZD‑Medicine. The centres focus on the prevention and early detection of occupational diseases, extended medical check‑ups, and coordination of mandatory staff check‑ups across the Company’s regions of operation. There are currently 34 such centres run by the Company.

In the reporting year, Russian Railways opened an occupational and preventive medicine centre at Semashko RZD‑Medicine Clinical Hospital. The new facility boasts a modern system of routing, queuing, and navigation, and a unified reference centre for functional diagnostics, which ensures rapid processing of information from across the sites.

Preventing cardiovascular diseases

In line with Presidential Decree No. 474 On the National Development Goals of the Russian Federation through 2030 dated 21 July 2020, the Company developed and approved the Plan for Implementing a Risk‑oriented Approach to Reducing Cardiovascular Diseases among Russian Railways Employees until 2030.

The Plan sets a target to increase the share of Russian Railways employees with a low or no risk of cardiovascular diseases from 18.1% in 2021 to 20.8% in 2030.

The Plan has four focus areas:

• creating and maintaining a single register of patients with the risk of cardiovascular diseases;
• improving cardiovascular services within the RZD‑Medicine system,
• preventing cardiovascular diseases;
• improving the talent pool of the RZD‑Medicine system.

Through the comprehensive programme implemented by the Company between 2019 and 2023, aimed at reducing morbidity and preventing mortality from cardiovascular diseases and early detection of oncological diseases among Russian Railways employees, significant progress was made in 2023: over 19,600 new cases of cardiovascular diseases were detected, and the coverage rate of dispensary monitoring for individuals with cardiovascular diseases reached 87.7%.

In the reporting year, 64,000 patients received inpatient cardiology treatment at Russian Railways’ healthcare facilities, with a total of 8,300 heart surgeries performed.

Health resort treatment

Health resort treatment, recreation, and rest are available at 57 corporate health resorts, holiday hotels, recreational centres, and camps across Russia (from Kaliningrad to the Far East).

In 2023, 68,500 employees and their family members received recreational services. When distributing and subsidising health resort treatment stays, the Company places a special focus on employees directly responsible for railway traffic safety. For most employee categories, the share of the health resort stay price offset by the Company may range depending on the facility, position, and dates (10–40% for employees and 20–60% for their family members).

The combination of traditional health resort programmes with new offers (such as detoxing, anti‑stress and yoga tours) is becoming increasingly popular. This enables us to come up with affordable, diverse, and high‑quality recreation solutions for employees, their families, and non‑employed retirees.

Children’s recreational facilities

In 2023, Russian Railways organised children’s recreational activities at 60 corporate children’s camps, 11 third‑party children’s camps, including two on the Black Sea coast, and 14 corporate schools and children’s railways. A total of 47,400 kids took part in the children’s summer recreational campaign.

Healthy lifestyle

Russian Railways adopted its Healthy Lifestyle Concept for 2020–2025, outlining a single corporate policy in this area and encompassing nine focus areas:

• living tobacco‑free;
• reducing alcohol consumption;
• healthy diet at workplace;
• doing more physical exercise;
• maintaining mental health and well‑being;
• preventive medicine;
• healthy working conditions;
• raising awareness;
• motivation.

2025 targets:

• increase the share of Russian Railways employees doing sports and exercising regularly to 55%,
• reduce the share of smokers among employees by 10%.

In 2023, we held around 11,000 events in all focus areas of the Concept, attracting about 3.6 m attendees from among the Company’s employees, their family members, and industry veterans.

To promote corporate healthy lifestyle culture and motivate our employees to follow it, we organise dedicated events, volunteer campaigns to raise awareness about healthy living, Healthy Lifestyle Week and Summer, Mental Health Week, health marathons, and the Strong Health programme at children’s recreational camps. All the events are announced and covered by the ZOZH_RZD Telegram channel.

The Company also stages family sports festivals like Mom, Dad and I Are a Sports Family, health marathons hosted by regional volunteer forums, regional sports and healthy lifestyle festivals (for example, Silver Autumn), and regional stages of the competition for the title of the Healthy Lifestyle Agent Coordinator. Currently, the Healthy Lifestyle Agent movement counts more than 3,000 members.

As a way to bring together workers keen on fitness and sports, we developed the Pulse corporate digital platform, which provides information about sports events, application submission and team building processes, while also offering updates on the participation of more than 17,000 Russian Railways employees in competitions and accrual of points in their bonus packages.

The Company has sports clubs in place to encourage our employees to exercise regularly. In 2023, there were 602 sports clubs across the railway infrastructure attended by 24,000 railway workers. In 2023, 166 sports clubs were furnished with sports equipment and inventories.

Russian Railways reimburses employee expenses on sports activities at third-party sports facilities. In 2023, more than 84,000 workers benefitted from this option.

According to the annual sociological survey titled «Employees’ Attitudes Towards Health and a Healthy Lifestyle», the integral share of employees leading a healthy lifestyle increased to 16.6% (up 7.3 points) compared to 2022.

The Company’s efforts to promote a healthy lifestyle were recognised in the Investments in the Development of a Healthy Country. Best Corporate Practices 2023 competition, as Russian Railways’ project focusing on the healthy lifestyle concept won the top prize in the competition’s Development of Wellness Culture category.

Employees’ mental health

We place a special emphasis on maintaining employees’ mental health and well‑being as part of the Healthy Lifestyle Concept.

During the Mental Health Week in 2023, we organised over 3,000 offline and online (on the ZOZH_RZD Telegram channel) activities for more than 100,000 employees. We offered our employees personal consultations with psychologists and training sessions aimed at maintaining their mental health, including through art therapy, use of breathing practices, and techniques for stress self‑regulation.

On 1 August 2023, the Company launched an anonymous 24/7 psychological assistance hotline for its employees and their families, with over 1,500 calls registered and more than 400 inquiries received through the chat bot to date.

There are currently 112 functional and emotional relaxation rooms across the Company’s regions of operation, 26 of which opened in 2023 alone.

Sporting events

The Company holds annual sporting events aimed at improving health and promoting sports and fitness among its employees and their families.