Leading in a crisis: Ukraine war forces business to step up

A week on from the start of the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s mil­i­tary aggres­sion shows lit­tle sign of ceas­ing. The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has been unit­ed in its con­dem­na­tion of Russia’s attack, while busi­ness­es are also show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ukraine. 

As part of the cor­po­rate back­lash, the world’s most valu­able com­pa­ny Apple sus­pend­ed sales of its prod­ucts in Rus­sia on Tues­day, car man­u­fac­tur­ers Ford and Jaguar Land Rover have paused activ­i­ties in Rus­sia and retail­ers Nike and H&M have stopped exports to the coun­try.

How­ev­er, for many busi­ness­es there is more than sales rid­ing on their response to Russia’s attack. As the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine esca­lat­ed, com­pa­nies oper­at­ing with­in the coun­try had to quick­ly mobilise to pro­tect their employ­ees.

International businesses evacuate Ukraine

For PwC, which has offices in the Ukrain­ian cities of Dnipro, Lviv and the cap­i­tal Kyiv, the first pri­or­i­ty was for the safe­ty and well­be­ing of its peo­ple. The pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices com­pa­ny has had a pres­ence in Ukraine since 1993 and has a team of more than 750 peo­ple work­ing in the coun­try.

A spokesper­son for the com­pa­ny says: “We are in very reg­u­lar con­tact with our col­leagues in Ukraine and pro­vid­ing all the sup­port we can… our sole focus and the only pri­or­i­ty for our peo­ple is the safe­ty and well­be­ing of them­selves and their fam­i­lies.”

So far, this sup­port has includ­ed pro­vid­ing trans­porta­tion, advice, and legal and finan­cial sup­port for staff and their fam­i­lies who are attempt­ing to leave the coun­try, as well as accom­mo­da­tion for those that are flee­ing cur­rent con­flict zones. 

Multi­na­tion­al busi­ness­es will have been assess­ing the geopo­lit­i­cal risk of con­tin­u­ing their oper­a­tions in Ukraine over the course of the past month, as Russ­ian troops began amass­ing on the bor­der. Ran­dall Peter­son, aca­d­e­m­ic direc­tor of the Lead­er­ship Insti­tute at Lon­don Busi­ness School, claims that the the safe­ty of their employ­ees will take prece­dence in these moments as busi­ness­es have a legal duty of care for their peo­ple.

Inter­na­tion­al finan­cial ser­vices firm Allianz took mea­sures to safe­guard staff in Ukraine by set­ting up a free tele­phone hot­line and is pro­vid­ing trans­port, accom­mo­da­tion and finan­cial assis­tance for Ukrain­ian col­leagues, on top of a €12.5m dona­tion to human­i­tar­i­an aid caus­es.

Man­u­fac­tur­ing multi­na­tion­al Hilti also has a pres­ence in Kyiv. A com­pa­ny spokesper­son says that it is in “very close con­tact with our team in Ukraine, both from the region­al as well as the inter­na­tion­al cri­sis man­age­ment team” and the com­pa­ny has com­plete­ly sus­pend­ed busi­ness activ­i­ties in the coun­try. 

The use of cri­sis man­age­ment and secu­ri­ty con­sul­tants has also been cru­cial for some busi­ness­es when try­ing to ensure the safe­ty of their staff. Peter­son explains that many of these busi­ness lead­ers will have lit­tle to no expe­ri­ence of a war­zone and effec­tive lead­er­ship relies on pri­or expe­ri­ence of a sit­u­a­tion.

British fin­tech com­pa­ny Rev­o­lut, whose co-founder and CTO Vla­dyslav Yat­senko is Ukrain­ian, brought in the exper­tise of a glob­al secu­ri­ty solu­tions provider that is assist­ing with secu­ri­ty updates and emer­gency logis­ti­cal sup­port and guid­ance. Its CEO Nik Storon­sky has said that its employ­ees in Ukraine are his “top pri­or­i­ty” and efforts to safe­guard them began at the out­set of the cri­sis.

A spokesper­son for the com­pa­ny adds: “In recent days we have been evac­u­at­ing staff or tak­ing them to safe shel­ters, and have been in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with those who decid­ed to take their own routes. We con­tin­ue to sup­port those who cross the bor­der.”

The UN esti­mates that more than 1 mil­lion refugees have now fled Ukraine. Rev­o­lut has pledged to match every dona­tion made to the Red Cross Ukraine appeal this week via its ser­vices, up to £1.5m.

Ride hail­ing app and gro­cery deliv­ery plat­form Bolt has a large pres­ence in East­ern Europe. In response to the inva­sion of Ukraine, the com­pa­ny has com­mit­ted to donat­ing 5% of every order in Europe to NGOs sup­port­ing Ukraine and its peo­ple, as well as mak­ing its own dona­tion of €5m. All prod­ucts pro­duced in Rus­sia are being removed from its deliv­ery ser­vices and it has sus­pend­ed oper­a­tions in the neigh­bour­ing coun­try of Belarus – a key Russ­ian ally.

A spokesper­son for Bolt adds: “We have giv­en the option of work­ing remote­ly from in or out­side Ukraine to more than 100 employ­ees based in the coun­try, and pro­vid­ed them with a bud­get for relo­ca­tion as need­ed. We hope all Bolt employ­ees, our tens of thou­sands of dri­vers, couri­ers and restau­rant part­ners, and all those in Ukraine remain safe.” 

Leading through a crisis

Peter­son has sym­pa­thy for the CEOs who are hav­ing to lead their busi­ness­es through such chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances. “It’s an incred­i­bly tough ask,” he says. “A total­ly dif­fer­ent style of lead­er­ship is need­ed in this sce­nario, when the con­se­quences are life and death. I am hope­ful that they can make a dif­fer­ence and take care of their peo­ple.”

In a post on LinkedIn, for­mer Refini­tiv CEO David Craig, out­lined some of the lessons he learnt from lead­ing the busi­ness through crises includ­ing hur­ri­canes, the finan­cial cri­sis and armed con­flicts and sanc­tions. “It some­times takes a true cri­sis to test your strat­e­gy and lead­er­ship skills,” he wrote. “And the inva­sion of Ukraine by Russ­ian forces is cer­tain­ly the largest test that many of us have ever faced, or ever want­ed to face.”

He explained that such cir­cum­stances require com­pa­nies to clear­ly com­mu­ni­cate the pri­or­i­ties and objec­tives that will guide deci­sion-mak­ing, as these will have to be made “quick­ly, under pres­sure, and some­times with poor infor­ma­tion”. He adds that, although those in the CEO seat may not have all the answers, “you will be asked what your posi­tion on this cri­sis is, what prin­ci­ples do you stand for?”

Many organ­i­sa­tions have now tak­en a prin­ci­pled stance, whether that be through direct sup­port for Ukraine, dona­tions to appeals or boy­cotts of Rus­sia. Peter­son says: “There are a lot of organ­i­sa­tions doing much more than the basic duty of care that is required of them. Many are now active­ly sup­port­ing Ukrain­ian peo­ple and set­ting up sup­port lines, which is real­ly impres­sive.”

As Moscow’s offen­sive on Ukraine con­tin­ues, there will be grow­ing pres­sure on those that have remained neu­tral to take action. As Allianz CEO Oliv­er Bate says: “We are an inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tion, but we are not neu­tral in our val­ues. We stand firm­ly with all of our employ­ees and all peo­ple whose lives have been affect­ed by these events.”