KDDI

KDDI shows leading practices in its support for people with disabilities. The company has made a high-level commitment to designing accessible products, discloses its employment metrics for people with disabilities, and supports accessibility initiatives. The company also has a range of products for people with disabilities, including a tariff discount for mobile service subscriptions.

KDDI has a programme, operational since 2005, that sends staff to schools around Japan to teach children how to use smartphones safely. The company also demonstrates support for school connectivity in developing countries by providing digital technologies to schools and classrooms in Cambodia, Myanmar and Nepal.

KDDI demonstrates best practice for monitoring, responding to and reporting on security incidents. The company has made a high-level commitment to child online safety, and shows several protective measures including content control, education initiatives and establishing a child safety website.

KDDI demonstrates support for open innovation through participation in standards organisations and collaboration with universities. The company supports the tech innovation ecosystem through a venture capital fund and support for non-profit start-ups. KDDI demonstrates good performance in sustainable innovation by sharing big data for track and trace during COVID-19 and uses the SDGs as a framework for its activities.

The company has an opportunity to support digital opportunities for women and girls. While the company reports disclosing its economic value generated according to international standards, not all the elements needed are disclosed. The company should clearly report how its economic value generated is distributed among stakeholders as well as taxes paid and employment in its markets of operation.

The company has opportunities to develop programmes for intermediate and technical skills. The company can also support a third party assessment of the impact of its existing programmes.

KDDI can strengthen disclosure about how senior-level responsibility for cybersecurity is handled.

The company has an opportunity to support start-ups founded by people from underrepresented groups. The company can also disclose metrics on the proportion of its women employees working in technical roles  and how ethics are considered in its research and development.

KDDI commits to respect human rights and the ILO core labour rights, and has a publicly available statement of policy that expects its business relationships to commit to respecting the ILO core labour rights. It identifies, assesses, and takes action to address its salient human rights issues in its own operations and its business relationships. It also has a grievance mechanism that is accessible to workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints. However, KDDI does not engage with stakeholders whose human rights could be impacted by its operations.

KDDI publicly commits to respecting the health and safety of workers, and places health and safety expectations on its business relationships and monitors their performance. Furthermore, the company discloses the proportion of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. However, while the company expects its business relationships to pay a living wage, it does not commit to paying its own workers a living wage. In relation to workforce diversity, KDDI provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by gender, and reveals that at least 30% of its board are women. It has an opportunity to disclose against other indicators of diversity, per employee category.

KDDI has a global tax strategy, but it does not disclose income tax payments for its individual tax jurisdictions. In relation to lobbying and political engagement, the company does not disclose its approach in a public policy statement, nor does it disclose its lobbying expenditures. KDDI does have a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints on the topic. However, it does not describe any processes to identify bribery and corruption risks, and does not include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with business relationships.

The below datasheet disaggregates scores within the three core social measurement areas and by specific indicators.