Tech companies are viewed as good employers in Ukraine, mainly because of the relatively high salaries they offer.
But there’s more to a good employer than good money — the brainpower industry of information technology also takes good care of its employees, its main asset. Apart from a generous compensation, it includes creating a comfortable working environment and running business in a socially responsible way.
Winning workers
Local tech industry players interpret corporate social responsibility differently: for some it means creating comfortable conditions at work, for others giving equal conditions to all employees, and still for others providing recreational services, following recycling and environmental protection policies, and more.
All of these are important for businesses to maintain a good image and thus win the competition to attract the best hires, according to the head of PR at the IT Ukraine Association, Yaroslav Kutovy.
Global business rankings have given a big boost to the significance of corporate social responsibility policies in modern tech businesses, Kutovy told the Kyiv Post. Rankings like the Global Outsourcing 100, for example, which this year included 18 Ukrainian companies, have made CSR policies one of the main criteria for ranking businesses.
This has happened only relatively recently: Global Outsourcing 100 compilers only began factoring CSR polices into the ranking in 2014, giving bonus points to companies that had such programs. But since then, social responsibility has become central to a company’s performance in the ranking.
“Today CSR programs are significant not only for an IT business to get into international rankings like this, but also to compete on the global market,” Kutovy said.
And although CSR is relatively new to Ukraine, it is gaining some traction in society, as can be seen from the blooming range of social initiatives run by companies, according to Andrey Yavorsky, the vice president of engineering at GlobalLogic, the country’s fourth biggest software developer.
“By having your company make a positive impact on the environment around you, you create conditions for the sustainable development of your own business,” Yavorsky told the Kyiv Post. “This is one of the pillars of the Western business values.”
According to him, more and more Ukrainian tech companies are beginning to realize that long-term social investments are important; and as a result they have started forming IT clusters and investing in public education.
Education key
GlobalLogic in particular places a lot of emphasis on education. The company organizes free programming courses, or labs, in national universities, supplies them with computers, and helps universities and colleges update their curricula.
The company works with the Kharkiv National University of Radioelectronics, and plans to do so with the Kyiv and Lviv polytechnic universities as well. Last year, 350 students took these programming courses.
EPAM, Ukraine’s biggest employer in the tech sphere, also focuses closely on education. With greater resources, it has more coverage than GlobalLogic, and has partnered with 16 universities. It buys computers for holding programming classes, and offers training to lecturers so that they understand what specializations are currently in demand on the market.
For several years, EPAM has been holding a program called eKids to teach children to code in the Scratch programming language, with 8,000 children having attended classes.
“As a responsible business, we understand that investing in children’s education is an investment in the whole country,” EPAM Ukraine head Yury Antonyuk told the Kyiv Post.
Everyone involved
Socially responsible initiatives are not just policies set by management: they can also reflect the concerns of the company’s own employees, according to Maria Filchagova, an HR marketing manager at software company Intellias.
“A lot of our social initiatives come from our workers, from their desire to change the world,” Filchagova told the Kyiv Post. She offered the example of Intellias programmers wanting to start recycling office materials, and the company helping them do so.
For others, CSR starts from the very basics.
For Kyivstar, Ukraine’s biggest mobile operator, social responsibility includes hiring workers on official terms, with no “salaries in envelopes” or unofficial (and untaxed) wage payments, according to the company’s corporate communications director, Anna Zakharash.
Kyivstar is now the biggest taxpayer and investor in Ukraine’s telecoms sector, and it’s one of the top 10 employers in Ukraine, according to auditor EY and recruitment firm Headhunter.
Besides, Kyivstar has had 75 different social projects up and running, with 2,200 of its employees volunteering to take part in them.
Kyivstar also counts charity as part of its corporate social responsibility, the company having donated a total Hr 18 million to worthy causes nationwide during the past two years.
Good reputation
In return for good CSR, companies get good reputations, said Kyivstar’s Zakharash.
“This is a non-material, but very important asset for a company — it’s fundamental,” Zakharash said.
A good reputation makes a company attractive to investors, business partners, clients, stakeholders, and employees themselves, she said.
The research supports her view: According to an opinion poll conducted by market research company InMind for Kyivstar, people who know about the company’s social projects trust it on average 10 percent more. And they are 7 percent more sure that Kyivstar will be acting in their interests.
“So, a good reputation brings not just abstract dividends, but real loyalty — purchases and the desire to recommend the company’s service to others, as well as to work for it,” Zakharash said.
The Kyiv Post’s technology coverage is sponsored by Ciklum and NIX Solutions. The content is independent of the donors.
