Tele2

Tele2 provides digital connectivity to several human rights organisations across the globe. Additionally, it discloses its country-by-country employment figures.

Tele2 supports Tjejer Kodar (Coding Girls), an organisation that teaches coding to women and girls in Sweden.

Tele2 follows best practice by considering data privacy a key topic in its materiality analysis and disclosing how it responds to information security incidents and reporting the data breaches it experiences. The company also demonstrates leading practice in ensuring child safety online by providing clear guidance on how to report online content that is sensitive to children. Furthermore, it discloses how it works with the authorities and other third parties towards fighting child online abuse and proactively blocking content containing child sexual abuse material. Tele2 has a child safety website and has also conducted a survey since 2017 to assess children’s online habits and use this as input into its child online protection efforts.

Tele2 contributes to the tech start-up ecosystem through its Reach for Change programme, which has supported over 1,200 social entrepreneurs across 18 countries in Africa and Europe since 2010. The company also demonstrates best practice in promoting sustainable innovation. It contributes resources for non-profit or university research on sustainability issues. Furthermore, the company coordinates a project that studies how artificial intelligence (AI) can help reduce network energy consumption.

Tele2 can commission a third party to conduct an impact assessment for its programmes to support universal access and digital inclusivity of women. The company can also demonstrate how it integrates the needs of people with disabilities into its product offering. In addition to reporting country-by-country employment data, Tele2 can also provide a similar breakdown of the income taxes it pays in individual jurisdictions and report the number of people with disabilities it employs.

Besides its support for Tjejer Kodar, Tele2 provides limited evidence of further initiatives in the area of digital skills development. The company has an opportunity to support programmes for developing other digital skills as well as for increasing school connectivity.

Tele2 can provide evidence of a high-level commitment to cybersecurity and publish a copy of its information security management certificate. The company can also publish a group privacy policy that applies the same rules to all customers regardless of their location. In addition, Tele2 can demonstrate its support for data privacy by reporting the number of government requests it receives for user information.

Tele2 can demonstrate how it promotes open, inclusive and ethical innovation. The company can initiate or partner on projects for advancing open source initiatives and standards. Further, the company can disclose how many of its women employees are engaged in tech roles and the ethical principles it follows in its artificial intelligence (AI) activities.

Tele2 commits to respecting human rights and the ILO core labour rights. However, it is not clear if the company commits to respecting the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining in all locations, since it states in its Code of Conduct that the rights of employees to freely associate and to bargain collectively should be respected “in accordance with the laws of the countries in which they are employed”. Further, Tele2 has a grievance mechanism accessible to both workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints.  The company does not, however, disclose a process to identify, assess and act on the salient human rights risks in its own operations and in its business relationships. Tele2 describes the stakeholders it engages with in general, but it does not specify whether it engages with stakeholders whose human rights could be affected by its activities. 

Tele2 suggests that it takes measures to prevent injuries at its workplaces; however, its statement committing to respect worker health and safety is unclear. The company expects its suppliers to develop an occupational health and safety management system. However, no evidence was found that the company monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships. Moreover, Tele2 does not disclose a policy commitment stating that it does not require workers to work more than the regular and overtime hours. It is also not explicit about whether it requires its business relationships to make this commitment. However, the company discloses the proportion of employees covered by collective bargaining agreements. Furthermore, the company lacks a publicly available commitment in relation to paying its workers a living wage. In relation to workforce diversity, the company provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by gender and age. However, it can also disclose employee breakdowns for other indicators of diversity, such as race and ethnicity. Tele 2 publicly commits to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment and has time-bound targets on the subject.

Tele2 has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and takes steps to identify and address bribery and corruption. It also includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its business relationship contracts. 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. Tele2 discloses its approach to lobbying and political engagement and states that it does not make political contributions.