How Do Ukrainian Businesses Work During The War?

eSputnik is an international company. Its offices are located in Ukraine, USA, and France.

Today, most of the employees remain in Ukraine, namely in Dnipro city. This is where we belong. However, about 10% of employees had to leave their homes and relocate to other countries, mainly European ones.

We had two offices: the head office in Ukraine (Dnipro) and another one in the USA. Some employees from the Ukrainian office stayed here in Dnipro, some left the city or even the country. To all people who moved, the company provided both financial and informational aid.

Our team is based in such Ukrainian cities as Odesa, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Lviv.

Our top priority is ensuring the safety of our employees. At first, it was unclear how to work, as a lot of us were forced to relocate to safer cities or other countries. As a consequence, the workflow was disrupted. But fortunately, the situation stabilized after a while.

The main office of YouScan in Ukraine is located in Kyiv. Most of the employees (75%) have moved to safer cities and now work in the central and western parts of the country. 25% of employees have moved to Europe.

Our offices are based in two cities, Odesa and Kharkiv. 100% of our employees are from Ukraine.

Ever since the war broke out, half of our employees stayed in Ukraine. The majority of them are in western Ukraine and Odesa. Another half temporarily moved to such European countries as Poland, Bulgaria, Germany, France, and Spain.

Unfortunately, some people are now under occupation in Kherson, we are in constant contact with them, believing that sooner or later they will be in complete safety.

The offices of Depositphotos and VistaCreate are located in Kyiv. All this time we have been helping our employees with evacuation within the country and abroad. We have been working remotely for a long time. Our team worked from different parts of Ukraine (63%) and such countries as Cyprus, Germany, Poland, and Hungary (37%). And now most of the team is based in Ukraine.

Ardas is an international company with the main development center in Ukraine. 21% of our specialists moved within Ukraine to safer regions, another 21% moved abroad, mostly to Poland or Germany, which prompted us to think about opening offices in these countries. And the rest of the employees stayed home, in a relatively safe place.

Almost all Choice31 employees are based in Ukraine. Some of them moved to other countries after February 24th: Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Turkey.

Netpeak Agency offices are located in Odesa, Kharkiv, and Kyiv. Approximately 81% of the employees stayed in Ukraine, and 19% – are currently abroad.

This war changed the life of our company and each of us. Ukrainian business has been hit hard, but we are sure that this is temporary. We will rebuild our country so that every business could continue working in a normal way.

With the outbreak of hostilities, most of the time our team was engaged in volunteer activities. Gradually, we returned to work, realizing that it is our duty to the country.
Now we combine volunteering and direct responsibilities. Two of our employees joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine to defend the country. Of course, we provide moral, informational, and financial support to everyone who needs it.

Now we try to combine work and volunteering. Everyone does what they can.

Stripo is an online drag-n-drop and HTML email editor. We are an international product used primarily by Email marketers and designers with a large audience. And we made an email campaign right away for our users with free war email templates that we created to support Ukraine. This is where we share real photos of bombed-out houses and suffering people. In this email, we asked our clients to support our army financially and help Ukraine in any convenient way.

The international Email Marketing Community, including Really Good Emails, send newsletters and create groups with a detailed description of what Ukraine needs and how to contribute.

Our great team has been working all this time. For many of us, it's the best remedy for stress and anxiety.

From the very first day of the war, we shared information about the war, raised awareness among residents of the Russian Federation and the whole world, were engaged in volunteer activities, and supported everyone who joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine or Territorial Defence Forces.

For sure, with the beginning of the war, the life of the company and its employees has significantly changed. Like all Ukrainians, the Serpstat team combines work and volunteering, despite air raid alerts. Some of us joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine or Territorial Defence Forces, others coordinated volunteer work and spread the truth about this terrible war as a part of Netpeak Group's initiatives.

The YouScan team continues to work and support the country's economy in many ways. A lot of us combine work with volunteering. They have different tasks, including the following:

• purchasing and shipping of military ammunition;
• purchasing medicines and food;
• provision of humanitarian assistance;
• assistance with housing to those in need within Ukraine and abroad.

The YouScan team always helps the army and refugees financially. The company itself contributed a large sum of money to the army and provided free access to its social media monitoring system to Government institutions of Ukraine, activists, and different volunteer organizations.

We at Choice31 have made the decision to continue working. Some people joined the Territorial Defence Forces, the others combined work and volunteering. Now most of the team returned to full-time working day.

In the early days of the war, most of our employees volunteered and joined the cyber troops. But soon, after a week, everyone began to actively return to usual work. After all, by doing this we not only can support the economy of Ukraine, but also help other people in the company, their families, and those who currently cannot work.

The main task of our business now is economic development and preserving jobs. From the first day of the war, we organized the relocation of our employees and their families from hot spots to the west of Ukraine or abroad. Now, we continue to work both with Ukrainian business and enter new markets in Europe and the USA.

Many of Netpeak's employees are involved in volunteering. And for those who decided to defend our country and joined the Territorial Defence Forces or the Armed Forces of Ukraine, we officially retained jobs and maintained the wages.

We are already used to working remotely, as it's one of the consequences the COVID pandemic has brought to our lives. Of course, no one was ready for the full-fledged war. But now, each employee is aware of what is happening in the company's life, knows their tasks, and fulfills their responsibilities.

There was no need for us to drastically change the processes in our team as we are an online product with clients from all over the world. Many of them worry a lot, but we constantly keep in touch with them and provide a stable work of the product. Of course, we suspended all business relations with clients from the Russian Federation, which obviously made them furious :)

Our company had a plan in case of war. We mapped out in advance all the necessary security measures in the case of hostilities. Together with the global Vista team, we drew up an initial plan to minimize the impact of the war on VistaCreate and Depositphotos. Our first priority is the safety of every team member.

We discussed several scenarios, although we did not fully believe that a war would begin. None of us had experience working in such extreme conditions, but now we act as quickly as possible. I hope that the manuals for the preservation of business during the war, which we will write after our victory, won't be practically used in the future.

We may say that the pandemic has prepared us in advance for such an extreme situation because for 2 years most of our employees have been working remotely. The real challenge was the solution to financial and strategic issues. We do not panic, but work and concentrate on the main tasks.

The eSputnik team continues to provide high-quality service to its customers. We do not work in departments now, as we used to do earlier, but concentrate on projects in teams. Everyone puts in as much time as they can. We support each other and promptly resolve work issues.

In order to be ready to act here and now, we eliminated bureaucracy, reduced subordination, and complex coordination procedures as much as possible.

After the suspension of business activities in the Russian Federation, we faced a lot of hateful words, and our guys from the customer support service had to communicate with not very nice users. We have lost significant profits from Ukrainian clients, but fortunately, some businesses are returning to ordinary workflows. We also launched a support program for clients from Ukraine.

We at Choice31 included daily plans and reports in our working processes and divided all the employees up into teams beyond the departments. Thus, there were those who gained new skills and worked in different departments.

Previously, we at Netpeak Software planned to perfectly explore the markets of the CIS countries, and only after that proceed to the expansion of activity on the Western market. But the war has made its own adjustments, and now we promptly reorganize all processes in the company and try to make them more foreign-oriented.

In Ukraine, we are a well-known digital agency with a good reputation. For foreign clients, Netpeak is, roughly speaking, a startup that has to conquer the market. After the outbreak of war, we had to act urgently, forming teams and rebuilding the processes for attracting customers in foreign markets.

It is our duty as a business to keep working and continue supporting the economy. And we are able to do it, due to:

• high-security system because of hosting on Amazon servers;
• clients' data security;
• safety of our employees.

We call on all marketers from the EU and other countries to support Ukraine. If you consider the option of improving the efficiency of your business processes and look for a CDP, please contact us via support@esputnik.com.

We fully understand that we are a global product, and we cannot let our customers down. For this reason, we have relocated many members of our team to other countries so that they could be safe and continue working. To let our clients help Ukraine, we also launched a charity fundraising project.

The first priority for Ukrainian businesses now is to retain the workplaces. Therefore, we cut costs as much as possible and try to keep the Netpeak Software team together.

First, we gave stability to the financial foundations of the company, reduced costs for renting offices and some services, and developed new strategies for entering the European markets.

Well, 10 years ago, we created a service, thanks to which companies from different countries could build effective communication with their customers. eSputnik has always adhered not only to all forms of legislation but also to liberal-democratic norms and European values.

The monstrous war against the Ukrainians, which Russia began on February 24th, 2022, with the support of Belarus, contravenes all these principles. That is why our service is no longer available for companies from these countries. We strengthen the European vector of development and support Ukraine.

We received significant incomes from companies in Russia, but after the start of the war, we stopped doing any business there. We are forced, though, to fulfill obligations under current contracts until their expiration. Now our business is fully western-oriented.

The areas of our work remained the same. We continue to serve our customers around the world and ensure the uninterrupted operation of the service under any conditions. Have a look at our brand-new media tool — Keyword trends. Also, feel free to check our research on how the war influenced the search.

Now the Serpstat team members are involved in different activities: providing financial assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, volunteering, resisting the enemy in the information space, and supporting the country's economy.

Two tasks have become paramount with the outbreak of war: security of our employees and sustaining the economy of our country.

We have decided to terminate our partnership with clients from Russia and Belarus as we condemn their actions. Our team supports Ukraine and tries to do business at the highest level.