HR Practices and Their Impact on the Firms’ Performance

HR-practices indisputably have an impact on the financial condition of a firm. The influence of practices observed in this paper - training, agency work and fixed-term contracts - in the Russian literature is evaluated only in the context of other practices or not studied at all. This paper presents the results of an empirical study based on a survey of firms conducted in 2014 and 2016 by The Labor Market Research Laboratory of the Higher School of Economics. The impact of training, agency work and fixed-term contracts on the financial condition of firms was revealed. The use of training positively affects the change in the financial condition of firms in 2016 but not during crisis times (2014). In the case of agency work, the use of practice does not have a significant impact on the change in the financial position of firms. The influence of fixed-term contracts depends heavily on the state of the economy. The influence in 2014 is negative. However, in 2016, the impact can be reflected by an inverse U-curve, and a positive effect prevails on average.