MHP, one of Ukraine's largest employers with about 32,000 staff, relocated more than 300 workers from frontline regions to jobs elsewhere in the country during the first six months of 2026, according to Anastasiia Hromova, the company's director of personnel management. Recruiting a single candidate costs the company an average of 4,500 hryvnias, and less than 2,000 hryvnias in frontline regions, she said in an interview with LIGA.net.
Hromova has worked in MHP's HR team since 2017 and took over as director of personnel management on 1 January 2026. MHP was founded by Yuriy Kosyuk and owns more than 15 brands, including Nasha Ryaba, Bashchynskyi and Lehko!. The company's revenue reached 57 billion hryvnias in 2025, according to YouControl data, and it is one of the few Ukrainian companies whose shares trade on the London Stock Exchange.
Recruiting workers from frontline regions
Hromova said MHP previously focused recruitment near its production sites, where people already knew the company as an employer. The company has since shifted toward hiring in frontline regions, where it has no factories or offices and where the brand is largely unknown, she said.
The relocations go beyond hiring, Hromova said, and include moving employees and their families, providing housing and helping with adaptation and social integration. She said many long-term residents of frontline areas face barriers to relocating and changing their way of life, but that strong communication and relocation support have kept staff turnover low among those recruited through the program.
MHP ran the campaign through local Telegram channels, Facebook communities and NGOs operating in frontline regions, and worked with local authorities and employment centers, Hromova said. Recruiters also used SMS messages and posters and attended events where the situation in frontline zones was discussed. Workers were placed in Ladyzhyn, home to MHP's largest poultry plant, in Vinnytsia region, at the Myronivska and Starynska poultry plants in Kyiv region, and in Dnipro, which is closer to where many of the recruits previously lived.
Salaries and staff shortages
Hromova said 41% of Ukrainian companies have reported a negative impact from the departure of young men under 22, and MHP has seen a similar trend. Young employees now make up about 10% of the company's workforce, down from 13 to 14% before the relevant law was passed, she said.
About 1 million more people left Ukraine over the past year, Hromova said. MHP closed about 8,000 vacancies last year, and the situation has not worsened this year despite the labor shortage. The hardest positions to fill are narrow specialized production roles and specialized office roles, including engineering and technical staff, veterinarians, specialists in the biogas and biomethane business, and machine operators, she said.
Average market salaries rose by about 20% over the past year, and one in four employers raised pay by at least 10%, Hromova said. MHP's pay system combines a base salary with performance-based variable pay, annual bonuses for line managers and KPI targets for areas such as sales, exports and recruiting, and the company aims to pay above market rates, she said.
MHP reviewed salaries twice a year, in April and October, in 2023, but has reviewed them once a year since 2024, Hromova said. It already carried out a review in 2026 based on market analytics. Average company-wide salary growth over the past year was 12%, with office staff seeing 10% growth and blue-collar workers 14%, across the company's eight business lines.
Hromova said salary is a baseline motivator but the shortest-lived one. MHP runs a recognition program called Zirka MHP, or Star of MHP, that grants non-material rewards to employees who receive various nominations, including a double salary, an annual subscription to AI tools, gadgets or a place at international professional events, depending on the award.
Veterans, mobilized staff and foreign workers
Hromova said 85% of Ukrainian companies have mobilized employees, and mobilization has affected both workforce planning and people management at MHP. The company has more than 4,000 mobilized employees and 1,000 veterans who have returned to work, she said.
MHP helps veterans find a different career path if they cannot return to their former position and trains teams on how to interact with veterans and support their needs, Hromova said. One of her team's KPIs is employing more than 80% of veterans after they return, and one veteran now runs corporate and inclusive sports programs for veterans, she said.
Hromova said candidates increasingly ask about draft deferrals during interviews, along with shelters, transport and generators. MHP does not offer 100% draft deferral coverage the way some other employers do, she said. During blackouts, candidates asked how self-sufficient the office was, and some employees came in before their shifts just to shower. Women candidates often ask whether they can bring a child to work; MHP runs a free children's center, and more than ten children were there on the day of the interview, she said.
The company's workforce is on average 42% women and 58% men, though the ratio varies by department, Hromova said. Ukraine issued nearly 9,600 work permits for foreign nationals in 2025, though a significant share were later revoked. MHP is piloting foreign hires in certain business lines, including workers from Bangladesh, Colombia and Moldova, and has employed about 50 people this way, of whom about 30 remain, Hromova said. She said MHP does not pay foreign workers more than Ukrainians and that pay depends on qualifications and output.
Training programs and corporate schools
MHP runs ten in-house professional schools covering fields from meat sommeliers to agro-managers, and more than 1,100 people have graduated from them so far, Hromova said.
The company invested about 200 million hryvnias in its MHP-Health program over the past year, she said. With about 5.8 million Ukrainians still abroad, Hromova said MHP's HR strategy targets multiple groups at once: attracting and retaining young workers, offering career opportunities and retraining for women, integrating internally displaced people, particularly from frontline regions, piloting foreign specialists on a limited basis, and employing veterans and people with disabilities. The company also partners with educational institutions in addition to running its own ten schools, she said.
