Telenor

Telenor’s Khushaal Zamindar (Prosperous Landlord) initiative provides more than eight million Pakistani farmers free access to an agricultural information system offering weather reports and advice on production techniques. The company’s Girls Create Tech Academy aims to reduce the digital gender divide in Norway by inspiring girls to challenge gender stereotypes and choose tech careers through mentoring provided by Telenor staff. Further, Telenor follows best practices by reporting how the economic value it generates is distributed among stakeholders and disclosing the income taxes it pays and its employment in the countries where it operates.

Through its programme Bruk Hue (Use Your Head), Telenor has provided educational opportunities for more than 100,000 students on the topic of cyberbullying. Additionally, the company provides training to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through its Net-for-living programme. According to the company, SMEs that participated in the programme saw their revenue increase by approximately 50%. In Malaysia, the company’s subsidiary Digi participates in Future Skills for All, a three-year programme that supports the Malaysian Ministry of Education’s efforts to strengthen teaching and learning of computational thinking and computer science in national schools.

Telenor demonstrates best practice in monitoring, responding to and reporting on cybersecurity incidents. The company has a group privacy policy, which establishes principles for all its subsidiaries to follow. The company also publishes a detailed transparency report disclosing government requests for user information across its nine mobile subsidiaries. Telenor is a leader in its practices for child online safety. It endorses the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF’s) Children’s Rights and Business Principles. It also teaches more than three million children in its markets about online safety, supports child helplines and works with partners to develop a child online safety curriculum.

Telenor demonstrates strong support for open innovation through membership of standards bodies and sharing source code. The company is a leader in sharing big data for research. Telenor also demonstrates support for the tech innovation ecosystem with start-up accelerators in several of the countries in which it operates.

Telenor can report the number of people with disabilities that it employs and provide evidence on how it makes the workplace accessible for them. It can also consider seeking a third-party assessment of its programmes to support digital opportunities for women and girls.

Telenor has opportunities to support initiatives for technical digital skills development. The company can also consider seeking a third-party assessment for its existing skills development programmes.  

The company has an opportunity to provide content control for its products.

Telenor should consider extending start-up support to social entrepreneurs and start-up founders from underrepresented groups. It should also follow best practice by reporting how many of its women employees are engaged in tech roles. *

Telenor 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. The company has a grievance mechanism accessible to both workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints. Furthermore, Telenor identifies and takes action to address the salient human rights issues in its own operations and in its business relationships. However, it does not publicly disclose its process for assessing its salient human rights issues. Moreover, the company 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.

Telenor publicly commits to respecting worker health and safety, and it places health and safety expectations on its business relationships and monitors their performance. The company does not disclose a policy commitment stating that it does not require workers to work more than the regular and overtime hours. It also does not explicitly state that it requires its business relationships to make this commitment. Furthermore, the company provides no relevant evidence in relation to paying its workers a living wage. Telenor discloses that all of its employees in the Nordic region are covered by collective bargaining agreements, but it does not report this for its global operations. The company commits to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment and provides information on the number of employees per employee category by gender. Furthermore, the company reports that 50% of its board is composed of women, alongside reporting the basic salary ratio by gender.

Telenor has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints on the topic. Furthermore, Telenor states that it does not make political contributions, but it does not disclose its overarching approach to lobbying and political engagement in a publicly available policy document.