Rakuten

Rakuten demonstrates support for digital accessibility with a high-level commitment, adhering to accessible design principles for its products and disclosing the number of people with disabilities it employs. Moreover, through its special subsidiary Rakuten Socio Business, Rakuten works to promote the employment of people with disabilities and provide a working environment where they can play an active role.

Rakuten contributes to developing basic digital skills through a programme for teaching digital literacy to the elderly.

Rakuten demonstrates high-level commitment and accountability for cybersecurity and best practice in monitoring and responding to security incidents. Additionally, Rakuten identifies data privacy as a key topic in its materiality analysis. Rakuten also provides content control options for parents to ensure a safe online environment for children.

The company supports open innovation through participation in standards bodies and sharing source code. It also provides support for the tech innovation ecosystem through its venture capital fund and other support to start-ups. Further, it commits to supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and uses them as framework for measuring its own goals and progress. Rakuten also discloses its renewable energy use and emissions data.

Rakuten has an opportunity to develop initiatives to support universal and affordable access to digital technologies. The company should also disclose how the economic value it generates is distributed among its stakeholders.

Rakuten has an opportunity to support initiatives for intermediate and technical digital skills development, as well as for advancing school connectivity. The company can also disclose participation and impact metrics for its existing programmes.

Rakuten should report the number of data breaches it experiences. The company can also publish a transparency report detailing the number of government requests it receives for user information. Moreover, as a digital company, Rakuten should make a high-level policy commitment to child online safety.

The company can disclose the number of its women employees engaged in tech roles. Additionally, it should demonstrate the ethical principles it follows in research and development (R&D), including in its artificial intelligence (AI) activities.

Rakuten commits to respecting human rights and the ILO core labour rights. It also has a publicly available policy statement that expects its business relationships to commit to respecting the ILO core labour rights. The company identifies, assesses and takes action to address its salient human rights issues in its own operations and in its business relationships. It also identifies and engages with stakeholders whose human rights are or may be impacted by its operations. However, it has an opportunity to improve its disclosures by providing specific examples of its engagement with these stakeholders. Rakuten does not have a grievance mechanism available to both employees and external stakeholders to raise human rights complaints or concerns.

Rakuten publicly commits to respecting worker health and safety. However, the company does not require its business relationships to commit to respecting the health and safety of workers. Rakuten does not disclose a policy commitment stating that it does not require workers to work more than the regular and overtime hours, and it is not explicit that it expects its business relationships to make this commitment. Furthermore, the company provides no relevant evidence in relation to paying its workers a living wage. Nor does it demonstrate how it support its business relationships in paying their workers a living wage.
The company has not committed to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment and does not disclose any time-bound targets on the subject. In relation to workforce diversity, Rakuten provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by gender. However, it does not disclose employee breakdowns against other indicators of diversity.

Rakuten has a public commitment to protecting personal data. It also has a global tax strategy but does not disclose its income tax payments in individual tax jurisdictions. The company has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, but it does not include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its business relationship contracts. Furthermore, Rakuten 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.