Employee Safety and Well-being

Context

Full-scale war, shelling, blackouts, and constant uncertainty have made psychological balance critically important. At the same time, there was still stigma around seeking psychological help and a lack of easy access to it.
Darnytsia has long been known as a manufacturer of affordable, high-quality medicines – but no less important is who we are as an employer. In times of war, information pressure, and heavy workloads, we launched the multi-level emotional support program “Keeping Balance – It’s Ours” to care for the people who make our medicines every day.
The program’s goals are to remove the stigma of seeking help, provide simple and safe access to support, strengthen leaders in working with teams, and build a culture of care as part of our employer brand.

Principles: human-centeredness, voluntariness, confidentiality, and choice.

Solution and Implementation

Program design.
We chose an innovative partnership model with two external providers to give employees the broadest possible choice of specialists, approaches, and client experience – with guaranteed confidentiality and scalability.
An internal psychologist or insurance-only model would not provide the needed flexibility or trust.

Implementation stages:

• Breaking stigma through education

• Empowering leaders

• Scaling individual support

Access is simple – via chatbots, internal channels, digital screens, and screensavers. Confidentiality is ensured: providers receive no personal data, and records are kept by anonymous identifiers.

Program Structure

General block – onboarding sessions with psychologists to “humanize” the service, thematic webinars (boundaries, emotions, balance, stress, planning under uncertainty), and collections of self-diagnostic and educational materials.

Leadership block – practical trainings on the leader’s role in team support, recognizing burnout risks, crisis communication, escalation, and safe one-on-one talks.

Individual block – 10 standard sessions and +10 for high-risk groups (veterans, mobilized employees, families of military personnel). After building trust and growing demand, limits were expanded to 12 and 24 sessions. Legal counseling for military personnel was added.

Access and Communication

To remove barriers, we built a simple user journey via chatbots, the internal network, screens, and QR codes. FAQs are regularly updated, and employees receive clear navigation on where to start, which format to choose, and how to prepare for the first session.

Confidentiality: partners do not receive names or contacts; data is tracked by policy numbers or identifiers. Monthly, partners provide anonymous statistics – request topics, workload, satisfaction – without personal data.

Management and Adaptation

The program is “living”: some services are permanent (consultations, chatbot), others seasonal or on-demand. Monthly, we review statistics, gather open feedback, and adjust topics or formats.

Community engagement.
We deliberately build a horizontal model: employees co-create topics, share feedback, and choose group support formats. This marks a cultural shift from “the company imposes” to “we choose and use.”

Results and Impact

The result is a mature, flexible system that adapts to team needs and strengthens the employer brand through genuine care.

• 12% of employees used individual consultations – above the industry average for mental health programs.

• 100% of participants found the program useful, important, and timely.

• 86% satisfaction rate (NPS); average consultation rating – 9.64/10 (per anonymous provider data).

• 88% of employees reported satisfaction with working conditions, personal growth, and contribution to results.

• Employee engagement index grew from ~77% (2023) to ~87% (2024).

• Internal communities collaborate – for example, the women’s community co-hosts art therapy sessions.

• Positive impact on employer brand: more favorable mentions in eNPS surveys and a higher share of positive open comments.