Blog post by Phillipa Tucker, EDF Eastern and Central Europe Coordinator.

I sit at a table with eleven women. We are laughing. We are in a bomb shelter, in Kyiv. But we are laughing, and I mean laughing hard.

I am here in Kyiv to collaborate with local staff at The National Assembly of Persons with Disabilities and the League of the Strong, to share and learn so we can keep the project on track. The teams, led by Larysa Bayda and David Davtyan, our highly experienced project managers, have spent a week with me unpacking every detail of the project, including the all-important aspect of human resources. Finding and keeping staff on humanitarian aid projects in Ukraine is not easy but during these visits I witness amazing dedication, expertise and energy from these teams. Human resources in Ukraine is more challenging since February 2022 for obvious reasons, but the teams here have rapidly learned and successfully navigated the legal and social complexities and who and how we need to work for the best outcomes.

Some of the human resource issues our teams encounter are:

• The ongoing and constant threat to the physical and mental safety and security of people in Ukraine through bombing, loss of loved ones, threat of loss and attacks all contributes to mental health and psychosocial (MHPS) challenges. There is a serious shortage of mental health services to assist people in Ukraine and they are seldomly disability inclusive. Indeed, this is one of the goals on the Empower project. We know that staff care, including offering MHPS services and other healthcare services to staff, is vital to the project, and that constant stressful conditions and emotional exhaustion have become more acute over time. Retreats, stress management, psychological first aid trainings, granting unscheduled leave, and allowing flexible working hours all helps to mitigate burnout and support staff.
• Due to smaller funding, projects like Empower Ukraine struggle to offer the same competitive salaries and packages as International NGOs and the United Nations, which then poses a risk to us losing staff from our programme.
• Lack of available expertise: Disability-inclusive humanitarian aid in Ukraine is a rather specialised area of work, and the local staff at NAPD and LOS have become the top experts on this topic, especially as persons with disabilities themselves, they are also best placed to design and implement solutions. This means that the organisations working in the Empower project hold vital resources and expertise on the topic even though sometimes they may not have academic knowledge. Our staff have learned by doing, are highly motivated and have the most useful networks.
• Service cuts: Not only do staff have the constant stress of living under attack, with the wailing of sirens warning of impending bombs and shelling, but the Russian war on Ukraine has seriously affected electricity availability and, as a result, also water, transport, heating, cooling, etc. Basic daily chores are affected, and because many of our staff have disabilities or care for a loved one with a disability, this caring is made much, much more difficult. Scheduling calls and online meetings when electricity (and thus telecoms) is available requires patience, dedication and significant organisational skills to balance family and work. The project provided some large, long-life batteries for staff, but the need for these solutions and others is still huge.
• Work having a lower priority: in the current situation people often cannot spend time working when they need to be caring for loved ones and raising children, especially when one parent has been mobilised or killed.

Gender perspective

Another human resource area of interest is the way gender plays out on our Empower project.

Gender inequality is a challenge in Ukraine. Ukraine ranks 66th among 146 countries on the Global Gender Gap Report 2023[i]. One of the ways this is reflected is that women are generally less present in traditionally male career fields, such as bus driving or engineering, and there are more women in the service and healthcare sector. This gender gap is closing rapidly as women are covering gaps left by absent men.

Interestingly, on Empower, most of our staff are women, and the men who do work with the project are most often men with disabilities. This is a result of many things, but let’s start with the basics: Ukraine had a population of 38 million people in 2022 [i], 6,3 million of whom are reported to have sought refuge outside of Ukraine since March 2022 [iii]. In 2022, 1,2 million men were already actively serving, and 1,5 million men have disabilities [iv]. A large number of men are living in the occupied territories, living abroad, or working in other critical services making few men available to work with us. The result: 6 men on a team total of 32 people.

Also relevant to human resources is how military conscription works in Ukraine. You might know that there are certain exemptions for conscription, one being having a disability. Prior to the signing of a new law in mid-2024, there was much debate about whether some persons with intellectual disabilities would no longer be exempted in the new law. Now however, all persons with disabilities have to go every 6 months to have their disability, and importantly the effect of that disability, checked by a doctor to remain exempt. This makes exemption much more precarious than before. Also, the new law affects families with persons with disabilities a lot more. Whereas before, there were some quite useful or broad exemptions for caring for persons with disabilities, these have been removed.  For example, those who care for their spouses’ parents with disability groups 1 and 2 lost the right to deferment, because the new law allows deferment only for caring for one’s own parents with disability. This affects families with disabilities in a myriad of ways of course, as they now have to build new solutions for caring. You can read the changes here in more detail [v].

There has been an ongoing debate about whether women should or could be conscripted in Ukraine and this could potentially affect HR planning. Female volunteers to join the military have grown (by 40% from before 2022)[vi], and starting in October 2023, women with a medical or pharmaceutical background were legally required to register for military duty (because of the obvious necessary skills they could bring to the war)[vii]. However, unlike men, these women can freely move in and out of Ukraine unless they have been mobilised. There have been discussions around general recruitment of all women but to date no change. Interestingly, the increased female volunteers still result in a lower percentage of women in the military compared to NATO states. The gender inequality I mentioned above accounts for this very low starting point, and so despite the increases the net amount is still low. As for EDF, because of conscription, we do not ask our Ukrainian staff to enter Ukraine. The EDF staff have to request it.

One positive aspect is that it is possible for development and aid implementers to apply for military exemption for project staff under Decree No 76/2023 and Decree 160/2024 which could assist some implementers to retain staff throughout their project. This is not a route we have followed until now, so I leave that there.

Upgrading OPD HR systems

Another aspect of human resources on Empower that has me impressed is the work done by the League of the Strong. In late 2023, a dedicated HR manager was hired, Olesia Zaika, who brought experience working with large and sophisticated teams,  so that in six months the Human Resources process at LOS was transformed. One-on-one meetings with every staff member, mapping existing processes, surveys with staff (on such topics as employee satisfaction, involvement, and internal communications) were all done. Finally, a SWOT analysis of the HR function and internal communications were completed.

League of the Strong now has a map of the way forward on HR, and various outputs such as an HR strategy, an internal communications strategy, and an HR Action Plan. An organisational structure, with description of roles and functionality also emerged. If that was not enough, League of Strong also developed an HR policy and outlined the main business processes. This was followed by implementing technologies, such as Slack and People Force, after the training and development of employees on these tools. In May 2024, instructions for recruiting, adaptation, training, performance evaluation were completed. LOS now has a more sophisticated HR system, way in advance of most other OPDS.

So, given the above and a few more human resource areas I do not have time to cover here, I find myself again in awe of how technically adept and efficient the teams here are and all the while working from bomb shelters or managing power cuts. Add to that, all the smiling and laughing. How does one say “Best team ever!” in Ukrainian, I wonder?

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About the Empower Ukraine Project

The Empower Ukraine project aims to improve the living conditions of at-risk people and to advocate for more inclusive humanitarian assistance. We do this through raising awareness of the rights, humanitarian needs and best interests of persons with disabilities within and outside the humanitarian coordination system. The project also provides cash, assistive devices, works to make primary health and rehabilitation services more disability inclusive and has components on mental health and psycho-social services and building the local disability rights movement.

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References

[i] World Bank Group, Data (2022) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?end=2023&locations=UA&start=2021[i]  Global Gender Gap Report 2023, World Economic Forum, 2023.

https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-gender-gap-report-2023/

[ii] World Bank Group, Data (2022) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?end=2023&locations=UA&start=2021

[iii] UNHCR Operational Data Portal: https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine

[iv] The Current State of Ukrainian Mobilisation and Ways to Boost Recruitment, Oleksandr V Danylyuk, August 2024. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/current-state-ukrainian-mobilisation-and-ways-boost-recruitment

[v] Who is eligible for a deferment from mobilization in 2024: updated rules for obtaining it, Visit Ukraine.Com, Ihor Usyk, Visit Ukraine – Who is eligible for a deferment from mobilization in 2024: updated rules for obtaining it

[vi] Defense Ministry: Number of women in Ukraine’s army up 40% in two years, Maria Tril, Euro Maiden Press, 2023. Defense Ministry: Number of women in Ukraine’s army up 40% in two years – Euromaidan Press

[vii] Some Women in Ukraine Must Register for Army – Could Still Go Abroad, Kyiv Post, Sept 2023. Some Women in Ukraine Must Register for Army – Could Still Go Abroad (kyivpost.com)