In June 2022, we resumed our work in Ukraine. We had to completely reformat the company's business processes as we used to deliver postal items by air to achieve the desired delivery speed and high quality. At the moment, we use road transportation in Ukraine, deliver to Poland, and there all our cargo is already included in the DHL network. This requires additional time and restructuring our processes within departments. We purchased additional trucks, our couriers received additional category driving certificates, but we understand that for many of our clients we remain the connecting force in Ukraine. Our clients are mainly business companies that need to run their businesses in order to survive this fundamental time for our country.
We pay taxes to support our country and provide paid work to all our employees. There were no staff reductions in the company and we added additional bonuses to employees to support them during this difficult period. We also consider it our duty to maintain the salaries of mobilized employees. - they are our protectors and heroes. We also help demobilized employees adapt to the workplace. They all have funding issues, and we're changing our processes so people can continue to work.
Currently our plan embodies simple golden values: understanding with the ability to listen and help. At the moment, it is very important to us that our people feel cared for and supported.
We continue to pay salaries, we even meet our obligations to raise salaries once a year. We provide all the social benefits, vacations, sick leave, continue to insure employees, etc. We allow those who can work from home to do so.
We care very much about people's safety. We turned our office into a real hub of stability: we purchased generators, beds, blankets, non-perishable food in case of blackouts. Employees can come to the office, warm up, wash things, take a shower and eat.
We practise constant communication with those who serve in the military. We constantly inform our employees about how the service is going, which of our mobilized defenders need help, visit them in the hospital, and proudly share information about who have been given awards - for example, two of our employees were awarded the Cross for Courage!
We also made reservations against the mobilization of 40% of men.
Employees support our company's attitude towards them, they value us and do everything possible to support the business during this difficult time.
Even though there is a war in our country, we continue to support our Ukrainian children. We believe that this is our strongest contribution to the future of our country. These are mainly children from large foster families and many of these families were relocated from the East part of Ukraine.
In October of this year, we signed an agreement with SOS Village and agreed on a number of useful and interesting activities for the next year.
For example, at the end of October, we invited children from large families to come to us for a career guidance excursion - 40 children accepted our invitation. We told the children about the history of our company, our business and corporate culture. The children visited key departments where managers told them about what the department does, showed how employees worked, and what knowledge and skills they need to have to get a job in our company. It was a very fruitful discussion because we received so many questions from the children. Then they visited our warehouse to see our processes, and see all our our vehicles.
DHL Central Europe region, which includes 14 countries, within the global Volunteer Day had an initiative to help get Ukrainian children to school. 14 countries in CEU region sent us stationery, school backpacks, other interesting school goods and at the end of the excursion we presented the children with big packs full of such presents.They were very happy!
We received great feedback from the children, so next year we plan to have more activities and master classes for children.
