Alphabet

Alphabet supports affordable access for low-income households in the US through free subscriptions to its fibre optic broadband service. Its Women Will programme provides digital skills training to women in 49 countries through several public and private partnerships. Alphabet has a range of initiatives supporting accessibility for users with disabilities, including adhering to internationally recognised design principles in its products. The company also discloses the number of its employees with disabilities globally and solicits their feedback on product design. It has internal training programmes for its user experience designers to make its workplaces more accessible. Alphabet also calculates its indirect economic impact in the US.

Through Grow with Google, Alphabet provides digital skills training, ranging from basic online skills to tracking results with analytics, to over 20 million participants. As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company’s charitable arm, Google.org granted USD 10 million to its Distance Learning Fund to help educators provide students with high-quality learning opportunities that were disrupted by the pandemic.

Alphabet follows industry best practice by making its information security management certification publicly available and also by publishing the number of government demands for data it receives by country. The company has a mechanism to report online harm to children and assists law enforcement in this area. It also has a child safety website and several educational initiatives to help families with digital well-being.

Alphabet is one of the leading companies on the benchmark in practicing open and ethical innovation. It demonstrates best practice in open innovation with an open source repository and publishes an annual open source report providing metrics on its open source community and projects. The company promotes the tech innovation ecosystem through its regional accelerators for start-ups around the world and specific programmes for start-ups founded by persons from underrepresented groups. Alphabet also reports the number of women employed in technical roles at the company. Further, it discloses the locations of its research and development (R&D) centres, and its AI principles include human rights considerations.

While Alphabet reports the number of participants who benefit from its access-related programmes, it can also consider carrying out third-party assessments to understand and communicate the impact of these programmes. Furthermore, it can disclose its economic value distribution among stakeholders and income tax payments and employment in its countries of operations beyond the US.

Alphabet has a Code with Google programme for students to learn about coding. However, it can develop a programme focused on helping adults become specialists in digital professions. Along with reporting the number of programme participants, the company can also conduct impact assessments for these programmes.

Alphabet should improve its transparency on cybersecurity governance and disclose the line of responsibility for cybersecurity at the group level. The company should also have a group-level privacy policy and report the number of its data breaches according to international standards.

Alphabet has an opportunity to commit to supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by aligning with the framework to measure its goals and progress in aspects beyond the environment.

Alphabet commits to respecting human rights and has a process to identify salient human rights risks in its own operations and in its business relationships. However, the company does not disclose the human rights risks it has identified, nor does it disclose a process to assess these risks. Alphabet discloses some general efforts to address human rights issues. However, as it does not disclose the specific human rights risks it has identified, it is unclear if the company is taking action to address its own salient human rights risks. The company has a grievance mechanism for workers to raise human rights complaints, but it is unclear if this mechanism is accessible to external stakeholders.

Alphabet publicly commits to respecting the health and safety of workers, and it places health and safety expectations on its business relationships and monitors their performance. However, the company is not explicit in stating that it does not require workers to work more than regular and overtime hours, nor does it specify that overtime work should be consensual and paid at a premium. In relation to workforce diversity, Alphabet provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by gender. However, it does not disclose this information against other indicators of diversity, such as age group, per employee category.

Alphabet has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and takes steps to identify and address bribery and corruption risks and impacts. However, the company does not disclose a global tax strategy, nor does it disclose income tax payments for individual tax jurisdictions. Furthermore, Alphabet does not disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement. Specifically, it has no publicly available 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.