The main asset of Ukrainian steel plants is their employees. Without them, blast furnaces, rolling mills and coke oven batteries are just large units, not means of production. That is why, in a full-scale war, HR management, retention and motivation play a crucial role in the success of the entire enterprise.
Our company is experiencing a shortage of staff, which has been a typical trend for the entire industry since the beginning of the war. In the labor market, where the staff shortage has increased and persists since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the issue of attracting and retaining qualified employees is becoming even more urgent.
To date, we have more than 1,000 vacancies at our company. The need for qualified specialists is driven by both production expansion and general market factors, including labor migration and changes in vocational training. Mobilization also plays a significant role in the outflow of personnel. Currently, there are about 3,000 employees in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The shortage of workers is one of the factors affecting production growth. Nevertheless, thanks to the well-coordinated work of our team, high employee commitment and efficient internal processes, the company continues to successfully fulfill its production plans. We are optimizing our work processes, implementing modern technologies and automation, which allows us to increase productivity even in such a challenging environment.
Expanding production remains our strategic priority, and we are actively working to overcome staffing challenges while maintaining high product quality and efficiency.
The plant is actively working to attract new employees, offering training from scratch for most professions, which allows everyone to learn a new specialty regardless of previous experience.
In addition, we encourage women to take up jobs that have traditionally been considered male-dominated, creating equal opportunities for all. For example, last year we launched a training group for crane operators from scratch, and this year we plan to expand to other professions.
We pay special attention to the training and adaptation of our employees by conducting internal retraining, so that many of our employees have several professional certificates and can work in different positions. This not only helps to integrate new specialists into the workflow faster, but also creates a flexible and efficient production system. It also helps to increase employee income by reducing downtime.
Cooperation with educational institutions, as well as attractive working conditions, competitive salaries and additional incentives for employees, also play an important role in staffing.
Working together with the entire country in conditions that would have been hard to imagine in peacetime, we have survived thanks to the impressive professionalism and dedication of our employees, as well as the support of our parent company, which has provided us with financial injections of more than $1 billion since the beginning of the war.
In order to increase staff motivation, we decided to increase the salaries of employees of the company and its subsidiaries from 5% to 22% (on average, 15%) starting May 1, 2025.
The increase will be made on an individual basis, depending on the deviation of the current salary of employees from the average level of remuneration in the Ukrainian labor market, taking into account working conditions in the workplace, and compliance with internal and external fairness.
The Company pays great attention to staff motivation and retention. We implement a range of measures aimed at creating a comfortable working environment, supporting employees and their families, and increasing job satisfaction.
The main initiatives include:
Thanks to these measures, we not only reduce staff turnover and shortages, but also create a comfortable atmosphere that motivates employees to stay with the company, develop with us and build a successful career.
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