Broadcom

Broadcom supports the Girl Scouts of the USA on a programme for mentoring girls to pursue a career in STEM fields.

The company’s foundation launched the Broadcom Coding with Commitment programme to teach middle-school students STEM skills. Broadcom also partners with Children Now, a research and advocacy non-profit in California, USA, to facilitate online learning for vulnerable kids whose learning was interrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the company donates refurbished corporate laptop computers to schools and after-school programmes.

The company demonstrates best practice through high-level responsibility for cybersecurity and making its information security management certificate available online.

Broadcom shows some support for open innovation by sharing source code. It contributes to the tech innovation ecosystem through venture capital investments and other start-up support. The company also discloses the number of women it employs in R&D roles and the locations of its R&D facilities.  

Broadcom should disclose the number of people with disabilities that it employs, and report how the economic value it generates is distributed among its stakeholders.

The company can provide more details on its digital skills programmes, such as disclosing participation and impact metrics and the financial and in-kind resources it provides to the programmes.

Broadcom should disclose how it monitors and responds to information security incidents. The company can also demonstrate support for child online safety through a high-level commitment.

Broadcom has an opportunity to make a high-level commitment towards open innovation and disclose how it applies ethics in its R&D activities.

Broadcom makes a broad commitment to respect human rights; however, there is no evidence that it commits to respecting all of the human rights that the ILO has declared to be fundamental rights at work. While the company states that it regularly monitors, assesses and reports relevant human rights risks, practices and impacts, it lacks disclosure on how it does this. Broadcom has a grievance mechanism accessible to workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints. Furthermore, Broadcom lists the stakeholders it engages with in general, but it does not specify that it engages with stakeholders whose human rights could be impacted by its operations.

Broadcom publicly commits to worker health and safety, and it places health and safety expectations on its business relationships and monitors their performance. The company discloses quantitative health and safety information for its US operations but not for its global operations. Broadcom is not explicit in stating that it does not require workers to work more than regular and overtime hours. It also does not disclose the percentage of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements and provides no relevant evidence in relation to paying its workers a living wage. In relation to workforce diversity, while the company provides a breakdown of employees in different categories by gender, it has an opportunity to disclose employee breakdowns for other indicators of diversity as well, such as age group. Broadcom does not have a public commitment or time-bound targets to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. However, the company does have more than 30% women on its board.

Broadcom has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption. The company also takes steps to identify and address bribery and corruption and has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints. Broadcom has a tax strategy that covers its UK operations only and it discloses the income taxes it pays in three categories – federal, state and foreign. However, it does not disclose its income tax payments for all its individual tax jurisdictions. The company does not disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement. Specifically, the company has no statement indicating that it does not make political contributions, and it does not disclose its lobbying expenditures.