Cisco

The company partners with local governments in India and Canada through its Country Digital Acceleration programme to provide free internet to previously unconnected communities. It also has initiatives to enhance digital access for women through its partnership with Laboratoria, a Latin American organisation, to empower women through its six-month boot camp on coding skills. Further, the company adheres to internationally recognised design principles for accessibility and has various products to accommodate users with disabilities.

Through its flagship programme Cisco Networking Academy, the company has been providing support to various institutions that offer technical skills training to more than 15 million people in 180 countries around the world since 1997. It demonstrates best practice in tracking and disclosing participation and impact metrics for each region where its Networking Academy is implemented. Additionally, the company supports CommonLit, a non-profit education technology organisation, to create digital education resources in English and Spanish for students in grades 3-12, especially in schools where the majority of the students come from low-income families.

Cisco follows best practice in how it monitors, responds to and reports on cybersecurity incidents, including making its information security management certification public and disclosing data breaches. It publishes a transparency report detailing government requests for user information.

Cisco is a leader in practising open innovation. It participates in international standards bodies and strongly supports open source projects. The company supports the tech start-up ecosystem through venture capital investments as well as through support to Astia, a venture capital non-profit investing in women-led start-ups. Its accelerator Cisco LaunchPad supports start-ups in India and organises a Global Problem Solver Challenge, which provides support to early-stage start-ups that aim to solve social and environmental problems through technology-based solutions. Cisco also supports researchers working on sustainability issues. The company reports the share of its women employees working in tech roles as well as the locations of its research and development (R&D) facilities.

Cisco has an opportunity to contribute to universal and affordable access to digital technologies. While the company has several products to accommodate users with disabilities, the company can also disclose how it makes its workplace inclusive for its employees with disabilities as well as disclose the number of people with disabilities it employs. The company discloses its community investments but can additionally report on how the economic value it generates is distributed among stakeholders as well as the income taxes it pays and its employment in its main markets.

While the company shares participation and impact metrics for its digital skills programmes, it can additionally conduct a third-party assessment of these programmes.

Cisco can strengthen disclosure surrounding high-level responsibility for cybersecurity. Further, though the company cooperates with law enforcement and has educational initiatives around child online safety, it can still make a high-level commitment in this area.

There remains an opportunity for Cisco to support and collaborate on research related to sustainability areas.

Cisco commits to respecting human rights and the ILO core labour rights, and it has a publicly available policy statement that expects its business relationships to commit to respecting the ILO core labour rights. It identifies, assesses and takes action to address the salient human rights issues in its own operations and in its business relationships. The company also has a grievance mechanism accessible to both workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints.

Cisco has a health and safety programme based on international standards, but it does not have a publicly available policy statement indicating a commitment to respect worker health and safety. The company does, however, place health and safety expectations on its business relationships and monitors their performance. In relation to workforce diversity, the company provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by gender. However, it does not disclose employee breakdowns for other indicators of diversity, such as age group. The company also lacks disclosure in relation to living wages and working hours. For example, the company does not disclose if or how it supports its business relationships in paying their workers a living wage.

Cisco has a global tax strategy overseen by the company’s board. The company discloses the income taxes it pays in three categories – US federal, US state and international. However, it does not disclose its income tax payments for all its individual tax jurisdictions. The company describes its approach to lobbying and political engagement and states that it does not make political contributions. However, these disclosures are not made in a publicly available policy statement. Cisco has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and it includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its business relationship contracts. It also has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints on the topic.