Many Ukrainians have been fired as the companies they worked for tried to find ways to stay afloat during the pandemic.
But, as a recent poll suggests, the picture isn’t that grim. In fact, more companies have increased their revenues than lost them.
The poll, released by the American Chamber of Commerce (ACC) on March 15, shows that 40% of Ukrainian businesses increased their revenues, while 37% lost money amid the global crisis. The rest retained the same profitability they had before the pandemic.
The survey — based on responses of 100 executives working for ACC member companies — also shows that about 20% of the businesses increased their investments in 2020, while 15% reduced them.
More than half of the companies neither dismissed employees nor hired new ones. About 24% hired new people, and 20% fired their staffers.
Today, about a year after the pandemic has hit Ukraine, 60% of the surveyed companies have positive expectations for 2021, expecting their revenues to go up. Over 30% of the businesses plan to hire new employees, and 39% — to increase investments.
Most of the companies entered 2021 with a new way of working, as 82% of them have switched to hybrid work, a combination of remote and office-based work.
Over the last year, around half of the surveyed businesses have digitized their workflows.
“Respondents named implementing the hybrid work environment and the digitalization of work as among the biggest changes,” said Alexander McWhorter, Citi’s country officer for Ukraine. Today businesses are more adaptive than before, he added.
About half of employees faced emotional burnout, while lacking teamwork and communication; more than one-third suffered from digital fatigue, according to the survey.
Top executives in Ukraine worry about perspectives of COVID-19 vaccination in Ukraine and the continuation of quarantine measures — almost 60% of them will promote vaccination among their employees.
About 60% are also dissatisfied with how the Ukrainian government responded to the COVID-19 outbreak and how it supported businesses.
But it’s not COVID-19 that worries businesses the most. Corruption and lack of judicial reforms remain the biggest nuisances for local businesses, according to the survey.
To rebound from the crisis in 2021, the government doesn’t just need to vaccinate citizens as quickly as possible, it should also improve its judiciary and stamp out corruption.
