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With the internal policy “Binding Corporate Rules Privacy (BCRP)”, the Deutsche Telekom Group is creating a standardized and high level of data privacy worldwide, applicable to the processing of personal data. Any breaches of rules, legal obligations, or of internal policies (like the Binding Corporate Rules Privacy BCRP) and regulations may have serious consequences not only for the individuals committing them, but also for Deutsche Telekom. Therefore based on the “Code of Conduct of Deutsche Telekom, deliberate misconduct will not be tolerated. Without any exception, Deutsche Telekom will severely sanction any such misconduct or violation against legal provisions. In doing so Deutsche Telekom will take no account of the employee’s rank or position within the company.

Every two years we conduct our employee survey in order to obtain feedback from our employees, discover weaknesses, and implement suitable actions to eliminate those weaknesses. The analysis on team level and of other criteria (e.g. function, executives vs. leader vs. employee, gender, age group) support the derivation of fitting concrete improvement actions on all levels. Around 80% of all employees participated in the last employee survey, the share of men and woman - where gender was specified - complies approximately with gender proportion in the group (participation rate man around 65%, women around 31% and diverse around 1%).

In addition to the employee survey, we also gauge employee satisfaction every six months through a pulse survey. This helps us obtain a current snapshot of the mood at the company and verify whether the introduced actions have been successful. This lets us make quick adjustments if necessary. The pulse survey in May 2021 saw a 77% response rate among the group.

How can international corporations put sustainability strategies into practice across borders? Deutsche Telekom employs CR managers for the relevant business segments and national companies to reach this goal. They use the CR Manager Network to regularly share best practices and discuss new challenges, thereby jointly promoting essential CR issues. The central Group Corporate Responsibility (GCR) department is responsible for managing the network. In the year 2021, the CR Manager Network encompassed more than 100 CR Manager from 34 subsidiaries based in 20 countries across the globe. 

The participants are regularly invited to virtual meetings and capacity building calls by Group Corporate Responsibility. In 2021, content and likely implications of the EU Green Deal were discussed as well as progress within the #GreenMagenta programs and the new strategic stream "Positive impact on society" defined by the EU segment. Furthermore, the network members could gain insights into issues like Impact measurement and the future of a greener mobility.

Our “IT remarketing” project involves reconditioning our used IT hardware to make it suitable for further use. We continue to maintain our partnership with “AfB gemeinnützige GmbH”, which offers job opportunities to people with disabilities. Within the scope of this partnership, we are giving some of our used IT hardware (e.g. laptops) to the organization for reconditioning and reselling. This will support us to save resources and to create jobs for people with disabilities as well as extend the life cycle of our used hardware.

Deutsche Telekom AG supports the United Nations Standards of Conduct for Business to tackle discrimination against lesbian, gay, bi, trans and intersex (LGBT+, + Plus sign stands for not excluding anyone ) people. “We are promoting an environment of mutual respect, tolerance and diversity. We stand up for human rights and promote openness and understanding in a digitalized and networked world. I am very pleased that we have adopted the UN's global LGBT+ Standards of Conduct for business,” said Birgit Klesper, Senior Vice President Corporate Responsibility.

Since 2000, Deutsche Telekom AG has been a member of the UN Global Compact, and is expressly committed to the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. “In joining 240 of the early supporters of the UN Global LGBT+ Standards for Business, Deutsche Telekom is sending a powerful signal to the ICT industry and beyond. As a responsible company, Deutsche Telekom is dedicated to respecting and protecting human rights including those of LGBT+ people.” said Fabrice Houdart, United Nations Human Rights Officer and co-author of the Standards. MagentaPride, the Group's LGBT+ employee network, is proud that Deutsche Telekom expressing its engagement to human rights by drawing the standards of conduct for business - tackling discrimination against lesbian, gay, bi, trans, & intersex people.

Deutsche Telekom AG supports the United Nations Standards of Conduct for Business to tackle discrimination against lesbian, gay, bi, trans and intersex (LGBT+, + Plus sign stands for not excluding anyone ) people. “We are promoting an environment of mutual respect, tolerance and diversity. We stand up for human rights and promote openness and understanding in a digitalized and networked world. I am very pleased that we have adopted the UN's global LGBT+ Standards of Conduct for business,” said Birgit Klesper, Senior Vice President Corporate Responsibility.

Since 2000, Deutsche Telekom AG has been a member of the UN Global Compact, and is expressly committed to the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. “In joining 240 of the early supporters of the UN Global LGBT+ Standards for Business, Deutsche Telekom is sending a powerful signal to the ICT industry and beyond. As a responsible company, Deutsche Telekom is dedicated to respecting and protecting human rights including those of LGBT+ people.” said Fabrice Houdart, United Nations Human Rights Officer and co-author of the Standards. MagentaPride, the Group's LGBT+ employee network, is proud that Deutsche Telekom expressing its engagement to human rights by drawing the standards of conduct for business - tackling discrimination against lesbian, gay, bi, trans, & intersex people.

Every two years we conduct our employee survey in order to obatin feedback from our employees, discover weaknesses, and implement suitable actions to eliminate those weaknesses. The analysis on team level and of other criteria (e.g. function, executives vs. leader vs. employee, gender, age group) support the derivation of fitting concrete improvement actions on all levels. Around 76% of all employees participated in the last employee survey, the share of men and woman - where gender was specified - complies approximately with gender proportion in the group (participation rate man around 67%, women around 32% and for the first time diverse around 1%).

In addition to the employee survey, we also gauge employee satisfaction every six months through a pulse survey. This helps us obtain a current snapshot of the mood at the company and verify whether the introduced actions have been successful. This lets us make quick adjustments if necessary. The pulse survey in November 2020 saw a 77% response rate among the group.

In a joint project Deutsche Telekom Stiftung and German Reading Foundation aim to awaken children´s interest in math and science and improve their language and reading skills by reading aloud to them. Appropriate reading materials (books, apps, e-books) are read aloud by volunteer readers to kids aged three to ten in kindergartens, primary schools and libraries. By late 2020, a total of around 3,300 volunteers engaged as volunteer readers in Germany and abroad– including 110 Deutsche Telekom employees (as of November 2020).

Top-level management plays a key role in the business success of a company. If managers at that level leave the company, their position must be filled in a timely manner, with a qualified candidate. Since 2017, we have a global systematic succession management process, which obligates around 1,700 managers in executive positions to be involved in succession planning. The process helps these managers to decide who could serve as their direct successor and who has the potential to take on their role in the mid-term. A digital platform helps executives with the nomination process.
In 2020, 4,400 potential candidates (DT internal and external, 25 percent of which were female professionals) were evaluated at special succession meetings. Successors get full transparency about the positions they are nominated to and their readiness to take on the role. This nomination and feedbackprocess is a valuable intrument to identify in a timely manner highly qualified successionb candidates in order to minimize the risk of any placement gaps. Furthermore Succession Management supports the internal mobility of executives within Deutsche Telekom.

In 2020 we closed the Global Talent Pool of 2019 and were working on a new concept of talent management, which is launched in the fall of 2020. The new concept focuses on identification, validation and long-term development of talents with the aim of placing them into strategically critical roles. In this new concept we allow leadership to identify employees with potential but also employees can raise their hands to be assessed. Employees go through a validation process of personality assessment and structured interviews, upon which leadership selects the future members of the hub – best matching role requirements. In the hub they will have a personal advisor brokering them to opportunities in line with their potential and targeted critical role. Our Board members are patrons and a broad group of business leaders serve as business sponsors of the hub. They mentor, make talents visible and open doors for them.  In the hub we will work on the development of members on the long-term, over multiple career steps.

There are 5,500 different job descriptions at Deutsche Telekom in Germany alone. As digitalization progresses, many of them no longer match the tasks and skills now required.
The skillsUP! program launched in 2018 aims to cut the number of job profiles to less than 1,000 and adapt them so that they last for the next three to five years. However, skillsUP! involves more than just modernizing job profiles. The new, up-to-date job descriptions are linked to the Group’s skills management so as to ensure holistic, integrated HR planning, make it easier to identify possible gaps in required skills, initiate training measures, or advertise new jobs. Deutsche Telekom is the first large German company to have such a mechanism. skillsUP! is the Group-wide implementation of several pilot projects that have been conducted since 2016.

After being enacted in May 2016, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has had a binding effect since May 25, 2018. Deutsche Telekom implemented the requirements contained therein in a three-stage, EU-wide project:

• Preparation: Group Privacy drew up a set of standardized rules, known as Binding Interpretations, that apply to the entire Group. They were developed in collaboration with the national companies. The Binding Interpretations include specific recommendations and best practice examples to implement the EU regulation.
• Implementation: From January 2017 to May 25, 2018, the new requirements based on the Binding Interpretations were introduced throughout the Group. This involved checking and, where necessary, adjusting all the IT systems. All employees were made aware of the General Data Protection Regulation, and more than 10,000 experts received intensive training.
• Evaluation: The implementation period was followed by a review phase during which all affected Group entities were asked whether they had put all relevant requirements into action. In addition to this, GDPR compliance was randomly inspected at 28 companies.

With the "Everyone needs education – education needs everyone" project, Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Telekom Stiftung support the corporate volunteering efforts of Telekom employees at day care centers and schools since 2010. Employees who engage as volunteer readers or offer workskhops for programming with microcontrollers in schools can apply for sponsorship with Deutsche Telekom Stiftung.

Telekom has been supporting the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) since 2008. The RMI is the largest initiative in the economy for responsible raw material procurement. Its aim is to identify conflict raw materials and to prevent their extraction and trading with them. The RMI goes back to a working group founded in 2008 by the Global enabling Sustainability Initiative and Responsible Business Alliance for the sustainable extraction of raw materials. Since then, the number of metalworking and smelting companies that participate in the RMI has grown steadily.

ICT products can contain processed minerals, some of which are mined under inhumane, illegal conditions. The proceeds are often used to finance civil wars in Africa. Telekom is committed to ensuring that the devices it trades do not contain any raw materials produced under critical conditions. It supports the efforts of the Responsible Minerals Initiative, which is committed to responsible raw material extraction and procurement. Their central instrument is the Conflict-Free Smelter Program and the corresponding Smelter Database, which is used to control the metalworking and smelting plants (Smelter). Independent auditors check whether the raw materials obtained come from responsible sources and create publicly available audit reports for each processed metal. To make it easier to report abuses, there are contact addresses where whistleblowers can submit their information anonymously.

In 2014 we became the first DAX company to develop a training program to prepare employees for supervisory board positions. The program was developed in collaboration with the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT). We are particularly interested in encouraging women to take a seat on the supervisory board. In addition to information on the traditional activities of supervisory board members, the training also provided insight into practical experiences presented by supervisory board members, case studies from the Group, and a simulated supervisory board meeting.
We also offered additional workshops for former program participants on topics such as “What’s new in corporate governance” and leadership networks.