Tata Communications

Tata Communications partners with the non-profit Trickle Up to deliver the programme Mobile Connections to Promote Women’s Economic Development (MPowered). The programme provides smartphones to women living in poverty in two states in India, along with training the women to use the smartphones to improve their livelihoods. The company also discloses how the economic value it creates is distributed among its stakeholders.

Tata Communications’ Skill Africa Program focuses on addressing the technical digital skills shortage in the region. This includes providing training in cybersecurity, the Internet of Things (IoT), the cloud, big data and robotics. The company also has a programme to integrate digital technology into the curriculum in 110 primary schools in Gurugram, India.

Tata Communications follows best practices in monitoring, responding to and reporting on security incidents. It also has a privacy policy applicable to all subsidiaries in the group.

Tata Communications demonstrates support for sustainable development, including using the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a reporting framework. It also discloses its carbon emissions related data.

Besides supporting digital opportunities for women, Tata Communications can do more to support initiatives making digital technologies more widely available and affordable.

Tata Communications has an opportunity to support more initiatives in digital literacy training.

Tata Communications can disclose a high-level commitment to cybersecurity and provide information on how cybersecurity is managed within the company. As a digital company, Tata Communications should also disclose a high-level commitment to child online protection in its business codes.

Little evidence was found regarding how Tata Communications endorses open and inclusive innovation. The company can better demonstrate how it contributes to open source projects and standards, and how it supports the tech innovation ecosystem. It can also report on the number of women it employs in technical roles, and how it applies ethics in its research and development (R&D) activities.

Tata Communications commits to respecting human rights and the ILO core labour rights. However, it does not require its business relationships to commit to respecting the ILO core labour rights. The company has identified potential human rights risks in its own operations and in its business relationships, and is in the process of assessing the saliency of these risks. Moreover, Tata Communications has a grievance mechanism accessible to both workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints. It also states that it engages with stakeholders whose human rights are or may be impacted by its operations. However, the company does not provide specific examples of how it engages with impacted individuals.

Tata Communications publicly commits to respecting the health and safety of workers. It also places health and safety expectations on its business relationships and monitors their performance. Further, the company discloses the proportion of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. However, it lacks disclosure in relation to living wages and working hours. For example, the company does not specify that workers are not required to work more than regular and overtime hours. In relation to workforce diversity, the company provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by age and gender.

Tata Communications has a global tax strategy, which is overseen by the company’s board. However, the company does not disclose income tax payments for its individual tax jurisdictions. The company has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption. It also has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints on the topic, but it does not disclose how it identifies bribery and corruption. Tata Communications discloses its approach to lobbying and political engagement and specifies that it does not make political contributions. However, the company does not disclose its lobbying expenditures, or require third parties to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

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