Hiring employees in Russia
Is your organization planning an expansion to Russia? When expanding abroad, most businesses will need to recruit locally, but Russia recruitment can be challenging for any business that hasn’t been through the process before. The unique language, business culture, and employment laws all stand in the way, so you’ll need to prepare in advance if you want to avoid costly delays.
Horizons’ global expansion experts will support you through the Russia recruitment process, offering consultancy and outsourcing services to take care of your hiring in Russia for you. With our help, you can find, recruit, and onboard the best possible workforce quickly and in compliance with Russia’s employment laws, even if you don’t have a subsidiary in the country.
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Russia hiring guide
Explore some of the key information about Russia recruitment and how to hire the best talent to help with your Russia expansion.
How to find and recruit employees in Russia
Russia is an enormous country with a widely spread population, so it can be difficult to find sufficiently skilled workers in some places. However, in large population centers such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, there are concentrations of educated and skilled workers, so you should have a far simpler time recruiting from these areas.
In Russia, social media is a very popular recruitment tool, with Vkontakte generally being the preferred platform for most people, although many people also use LinkedIn. Beyond this, there are several popular dedicated job websites, including Zarplata and Rabota, among others
Many companies choose to outsource their Russia recruitment to specialized recruiters, such as the team at Horizons.
Discrimination laws for hiring in Russia
There are a number of laws in Russia to protect employees and job candidates from discrimination by employers. For example, it is illegal to discriminate against candidates based on their religion, political stance, age, gender, pregnancy, and anything not directly linked to the role in question.
Failure to follow the hiring rules can result in legal action, so it is important that you understand the rules before you start recruiting. An efficient way to avoid breaking the rules is to hire a Russia recruitment consultancy such as Horizons to advise you on your recruitment strategy.
Onboarding staff in Russia
The process of onboarding new employees in Russia varies significantly from company to company. For example, you may choose to follow an on-the-job training regime, or you may choose to provide dedicated training for a few days or weeks before employees start working normally.
Whatever method you choose, we recommend maintaining open and clear communication with your employees, being honest about expectations, and providing adequate training/orientation for them to understand the requirements and culture. It may also be a good idea to send company representatives, such as an employee’s direct line manager, to Russia to help with the onboarding process, even if they won’t be based there permanently.
Compliance for Russia recruitment
To remain compliant with Russian employment law, you will need to offer employees various entitlements such as maximum working hours, overtime pay, sick pay, vacation leave, and so on. These entitlements should be included in each employee’s contract, and we recommend discussing them with your employees to avoid any misunderstandings or disputes. For more details of employee entitlements in Russia, visit our Russia PEO page.
