18 May 2023
During a year of working under martial law, Progresstech Ukraine, which provides intelligent services for the aerospace industry, radically changed team interaction processes and increased labor productivity. Despite the negative impact of Russia’s armed aggression on Ukrainian business, the company retained a powerful engineering team, extended contracts for supplying services, and doubled the wages of engineers involved in current project work.
Progresstech Ukraine had to significantly rearrange business processes twice in order to restore effective functioning, which had been disrupted by the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion. The first essential modernization of the company’s work was in March-April 2022, caused by the mass relocation of workers who were forced to migrate as a result of Russia’s invasion.
In March 2022, monitoring of personnel resettlement within Ukraine showed that employees were predominantly concentrated in the western regions of the country, in Kyiv, and in the suburbs of the capital city. At the same time, engineers who had crossed the Ukrainian border were primarily in Poland, where the Progresstech Ukraine management planned to rent office space.
The significant geographical dispersal of personnel required immediately transferring the entire Progresstech Ukraine team to working remotely. The complexity of the task consisted in the need for additional technical equipment in view of very strict cyber security standards. The high requirements were caused by the company’s participation in international aerospace programs.
Fortunately, Progresstech Ukraine had quite successful experience setting up remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, the company provided autonomous operation for half of the engineering staff, which was sufficient for protecting the design center from the spread of infection. However, this work autonomy level was not enough for the hot conditions of the war.
At the beginning of the Russian offensive, 500 Progresstech Ukraine specialists had customer-verified portable IT systems and secure remote access to communication technologies and software products. About another 500 of the company’s employees, who had become displaced persons, did not have portable computer equipment. Therefore, they were deprived of the opportunity to participate in team project work in the first weeks of the Russian invasion.
Because of this, in March 2022, Progresstech Ukraine implemented a sharing model – small engineer groups jointly used existing portable protected computer equipment. The management formed micro-groups, taking into account employees’ places of residence and, if necessary, helped colleagues to change their location.
In April-May, the corporate sharing system worked more and more stably, which made it possible to organize several shifts for design work. Engineers returned to participating in international project groups and vertical and horizontal working connections that had been lost were restored. Starting from April, the average monthly number of personnel involved in international aerospace projects was constantly growing, and since June, it steadily exceeded the pre-war monthly figures.
In October-November 2022, Ukrainian business suffered a new attack: the Russian Federation resorted to massive missile and drone strikes with the aim of destroying Ukraine’s energy system. Practically all regions of the country were regularly plunged into darkness due to incidents at energy infrastructure facilities.
Under these conditions, working remotely did not allow the company’s engineers to systematically interact with partners as part of international project teams. Constant power outages interrupted work processes and led to violating project schedules. This significantly reduced productivity and forced Progresstech Ukraine to reorganize labor for the second time in the year.
Over the course of several weeks, the company set up a number of offices, equipped them with alternative uninterrupted power supply systems and satellite Internet terminals, and provided backup supplies of drinking water and food products.
Already at the beginning of November, Progresstech Ukraine had six office centers operating. Three of them are in different districts of Kyiv and three more are in the suburbs of the capital city (Bucha district), in the west of Ukraine (Ivano-Frankivsk), and in the north of Poland (Bydgoszcz). In total, these offices have enough workplaces equipped to accommodate the company’s entire staff.
Thus, Progresstech Ukraine once again found effective protection against Russian armed attacks on Ukrainian business and civilian infrastructure.
Progresstech-Ukraine is now able to work effectively in offline, remote or hybrid formats, regardless of Russia's attempts to destroy the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine.
