Management & facts

You can find a description of our business activities on our website and detailed information about our business development in the 2020 annual report.

Our Group is broken down into five operating segments:

We are convinced that commercial, social, and ecological aspects can complement each other. We aim to make a positive contribution to sustainable development throughout our entire value chain.

Overall responsibility for CR (Corporate Responsibility) lies with our Board of Management; it discusses and decides on important CR matters. The Chief Human Resources Officer and Board Member for Human Resources and Legal Affairs is also in charge of the Corporate Responsibility unit. She decides which CR matters are to be classed as important and represents them on the Board of Management. The Group Corporate Responsibility (GCR) unit reports to the Human Resources and Legal Affairs Board department. It develops Group-wide policies and guidelines with the goal of advancing the corporate culture with regard to sustainable innovation and social responsibility.
In order to always ensure a direct exchange between CR and our core business, the CR Board advises GCR. This board is made up of the heads of the main Group units.

The managements of the different business units and national companies are responsible for implementing our CR strategy. They collaborate within the international CR Manager Network, where they coordinate their activities and share best practices.

Our CR Policy  provides the formal, mandatory framework for the sustainability management activities at all Group units. The CR Policy has also been successfully introduced in a majority of European national companies since 2017.

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Melanie Kubin-Hardewig

We use an IT-based data collection system to record environmental, social, and governance (ESG ) data. It supports standardized, mandatory processes at the Group and national levels and enables Group-wide benchmarks.

We use this data primarily to calculate relevant indicators and our ESG KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), which we use to measure and control our CR performance throughout the Group. Our CR controlling ensures that we can report both ESG data and KPIs transparently in good time in the  “Management & facts“ section and in the interactive KPI tool of this CR report.

We are continuously improving our performance indicator system on the basis of internal and external requirements. In 2020, we extended our reporting on resource conservation so that we can provide information on the various successes in our “we care for our planet” program and the “Green Pioneers” employee community. We also developed new KPIs for our supplier management.

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Silke Thomas

ESG  KPIs (key performance indicators) are used as management tools for our CR activities. Since they are highly relevant, we also publish them in the combined non-financial statement of our annual report.

Our national companies assist in the collection of Group-wide ESG KPIs by recording CR data themselves. These national companies represent 99 percent of the Group’s net revenue.

For the purpose of integrated financial and sustainability reporting, the KPIs map all six types of capital (see diagram).

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Silke Thomas

Sustainability and social responsibility have played a key role in our corporate activities for more than two decades. Today, we consistently organize our core business processes on a sustainable footing. In 2019, we adapted our Group strategy to explicitly make the concept of “acting responsibly” a fundamental element. 

You can find additional information on our Group strategy in the 2020 annual report.

Our CR strategy is derived from the Group strategy and revolves around our three CR action areas and six focus topics.

The national companies use our CR strategy to determine their own sustainability activities. An integrated organizational structure helps us to closely interlink strategic management and operational implementation of our CR strategy throughout the Group. Overall responsibility for sustainability lies with the Deutsche Telekom Board of Management.

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Melanie Kubin-Hardewig

The CR program is where we define targets and report on progress regarding their implementation. In 2020, we once again aligned the CR program in accordance with the four pillars of our Management & facts section – Strategy, Economy, Environment and Social.

For us, comprehensive risk and opportunity management also means considering the opportunities and risks arising from ecological or social aspects, or from the management of our company (environment, social and governance – ESG ). We actively and systematically involve relevant stakeholders in order to identify which current and potential ESG risks and opportunities are important for Deutsche Telekom. We also participate in a number of working groups and committees. We continuously track ESG issues and systematically ascertain our stakeholders’ positions on these matters.

Important tools we use for this purpose are: 

• Our risk management system that systematically identifies, evaluates, and adresses relevant risks
• Our (annual) evaluation of emerging risks, which provides an overview of new and long-term trends in external risks
• Fortnightly social media monitoring, which evaluates information appearing on social media that is relevant to us 
• Our involvement in working groups and committees, numerous national and international business associations, and social organizations (GeSI, Federation of German Industries, Bitkom, econsense, and the German National Association of Senior Citizen's Organizations, for example)
• Stakeholder dialog formats organized by us 
• Our various publications, such as the press review and newsletters.
• Our internal compliance evaluation, which also examines the most important sustainability risks
• Our materiality process

In our annual report we also provide information about the following issues, which we have defined as key aspects of our risk and opportunity management:

• Climate protection
• Suppliers
• Health and the environment 

We are currently investigating internally how we can align our reporting on climate-related financial risks and opportunities with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD ). For this we are building on the existing approaches for strategy, controlling, technology, and risk management. Further information on the TCFD is available here.

Corporate responsibility (CR) is based on shared values. To solidify our corporate culture, we convey the basic values of our company to all employees through binding (Guiding Principles). We use various measures such as reviews and updates, as recently in the reporting year, and the annual “Living Culture Day” to remind employees of these values again and again, entrenching them in our everyday work. And the measures have been successful. According to our pulse survey in November 2020, 90 percent of our employees believe that the Guiding Principles are applied to our everyday work.

In addition, we use our Code of Conduct and the Code of Human Rights & Social Principles to ensure that everyone at our Group and our partners demonstrates corporate responsibility in their conduct. They are also the basis for our compliance management system, which guarantees that our business activities are in compliance with laws and regulations. We also use the Code of Conduct & Social Principles to entrench ethical standards and, in particular, the protection of human rights throughout the Group.

Our integrated management system for Health, Safety and Environment (HSE ) contributes at Group level to making sustainability a component of all our business processes and of our employees’ everyday lives.

It helps us to systematically plan, implement, and improve our processes in the areas mentioned. This promotes the health of our employees and also has a positive effect on their performance. It also helps us to bid on new projects in which potential commercial customers require their suppliers to provide HSE certificates.

Our Group-level HSE management system is covered by an umbrella certificate based on the international standards ISO 45001 (formerly OHSAS 18001 ) for occupational health and safety and ISO 14001 for environmental management. For some units, it also covers international standard ISO 9001  for quality management.

Some of the national companies are not covered by an umbrella certificate because they have their own certifications, some of which are even more comprehensive. This is the case in Greece, for example. The OTE Group has an integrated management system. In addition to the above-mentioned standards, it also covers the international standards ISO 50001  for energy management and ISO 27001 for data security.

All of our employees in Germany have ISO 14001- and ISO 45001 certified workstations. We further expanded coverage by the end of 2020, with certification of the following companies: T-Systems Polska and T-Systems Schweiz, Deutsche Telekom Service Europe (Czech Republic, Romania), Deutsche Telekom Global Business Solutions (Austria, Hungary, Slovakia) according to ISO 45001 and ISO 14001, and T-Systems ITC Iberia according to ISO 45001. That means we already cover 98 percent of our employees internationally.