Russia’s workforce is numerous and well-educated, especially in technical subjects. Russian employees have a broad range of skills and abilities. A growing number of Russians can work in an English environment. The labor is, especially in comparison to the Western Europe standard, low paid.

The poor living conditions and the high level of alcoholism among the Russian population is affecting the productivity and the efficiency as well as resulting in a high absenteeism rate. Also, part of the workforce have been used to work under a communism regime, were the individual initiative was seldom rewarded. It is a common practise for Russian workers to sell private and secretive information on companies activities to criminal organizations in order to make money. For example, financial information could be communicated to criminal groups who can then use the information to extort money.