Spark

The company’s charitable organisation, the Spark Foundation, operates the Skinny Jump programme, aimed at providing broadband access to low-income families, as well as to libraries and community centres. The company also funds events supporting female coders, provides accessible services for users with disabilities, and discloses community investments.

Spark has relevant programmes in all four categories of digital skills. In relation to basic and intermediate digital skills, the company runs programmes aimed at developing digital knowledge among Māori youth, and has hosted events in partnership with Google to assist small businesses in New Zealand develop online capabilities. The company also funds the Take2 programme, which teaches incarcerated individuals coding to improve employment opportunities. It also operates the Recycle a Device programme, which trains high school students to refurbish second-hand laptops and deliver them to youths in need.

Spark meets industry norms by having a security incident response team and information security management certification, as well as disclosing its number of data breaches. The company also has a privacy policy at the group level and publishes transparency data detailing requests it receives from government agencies. The company has several initiatives supporting child online safety, including programmes to help children navigate social media and online gaming.

The company supports Kōkiri, an accelerator programme in New Zealand for Māori innovators. It also supports various non-profit start-ups.

Spark can disclose additional metrics on its existing programmes for increasing access. In addition, the company has opportunities to further its work with people with disabilities by disclosing employment statistics, partnering with disability organizations, as well as providing a statement on its commitment to accessibility.

The company has an opportunity to disclose additional metrics on the programmes it runs for skills development, as well as carry out impact assessments.

The company has an opportunity to further improve through making high-level commitments in relation to cybersecurity and child online protection.

There is an opportunity for Spark to increase transparency regarding its initiatives for open, inclusive and ethical innovation. Specifically, the company should disclose the number of its women employees engaged in technical roles, as well as the ethical principles it considers in research and development (R&D), including its artificial intelligence (AI) activities.

Spark commits to respecting human rights, but it does not have a policy statement committing to respect all the labour fundamentals outlined in the ILO core labour rights. The company has processes to mitigate the risk of modern slavery. However, it does not disclose a process to identify, assess and take action on all of the salient human rights risks in its own operations and in its business relationships. Moreover, the company does not engage with stakeholders whose human rights could be impacted by its operations. Spark has a grievance mechanism for workers to raise human rights concerns and complaints. However, it is unclear if this mechanism is accessible to external stakeholders.

Spark expects its business relationships to commit to respecting workers’ health and safety. The company also discloses the percentage of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements, but it provides no relevant evidence in relation to paying its workers living wages. While the company provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by age and gender, it does not disclose against any other indicators of diversity per employee category. However, Spark does report basic salary and remuneration of women to men, across employee categories.

Spark has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and it includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in contracts with its business relationships. In relation to lobbying and political engagement, the company states that it did not make any political donations in its 2019 and 2020 financial years. However, it has no policy statement indicating that it does not make political contributions, and it does not disclose its lobbying expenditures.

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