Etisalat

Etisalat offers products designed for people with disabilities and ensures that its services are adapted to meet their needs.

Etisalat’s Pakistani subsidiary provides connectivity to schools in low-income areas.

Etisalat follows best practice by reporting the number of data breaches it experiences. It also demonstrates high-level accountability for information security through executive-level positions and committees. In the UAE, the company offers a service that allows parents to control the online content accessible to their children, and it educates the public on child online safety.

Etisalat supports the tech innovation ecosystem through venture capital investment and other assistance to start-ups. The company also deploys innovative solutions for more environmentally efficient city management.

While Etisalat offers products designed for people with disabilities, it has an opportunity to expand its support for providing universal and affordable access to digital technologies for vulnerable groups. It can also expand its support for digital inclusivity for women and girls. Additionally, Etisalat can disclose how the economic value it generates is distributed among its stakeholders and report the taxes it pays and its employment in the markets in which it operates.

Etisalat has an opportunity to support programmes for digital skills development.

The company reports being certified by internationally recognised information security standards, but it can make a copy of the certificate publicly available. Further, Etisalat should follow best practice and report the number of government requests it receives for personal information. It should also adopt a group privacy policy that applies the same rules to all customers regardless of their location. Moreover, next to its efforts to keep children safe online, the company can institute a group-wide commitment to child online safety.

There is little evidence of Etisalat’s support for open innovation, besides its participation in some standards organisations. The company can demonstrate how it supports external research through partnership with universities and non-profits. Given the evidence that Etisalat operates a research and innovation centre, it can provide transparency on how many women it employs in research and development (R&D), as well as how it applies ethics in its R&D activities.

Etisalat states in its sustainability report that it supports human rights and has a zero-tolerance commitment regarding human rights violations. However, no formal policies or commitments of the company relating to respect for human rights were found in the public domain. Etisalat does not have a publicly available policy statement committing to respect the ILO core labour rights either. Nor does it disclose a process to identify, assess and mitigate the salient human rights risks associated with its own operations and with its business relationships. Furthermore, it is unclear if the grievance mechanism the company provides for workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights complaints and concerns allows complainants to choose to remain anonymous.

Etisalat publicly commits to respecting worker health and safety, and it places 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 this only for its headquarters and not its entire workforce. It also does not disclose employee breakdowns against other indicators of diversity. Etisalat lacks disclosure on topics such as living wages, working hours and collective bargaining. For example, it does not explicitly state that it does not require workers to work more than regular and overtime hours, and it does not disclose the percentage of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements.

Etisalat has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and it includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its business relationship contracts. The company also takes steps to identify and address bribery and corruption and has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints on the topic. However, the company does not disclose any relevant information in relation to tax, such as a global tax strategy or its income tax payments in individual tax jurisdictions. Furthermore, Etisalat does not disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement. Specifically, the company has no public statement indicating that it does not make political contributions, and it does not disclose its lobbying expenditures.