Employee Diversity and inclusion

Allison Kirkby, President & CEO of Telia Company, on Telia Company’s commitment to Diversity & Inclusion

What does DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) mean to Telia Company?

Diversity and Inclusion is an integral part of Telia Company’s culture and one of the ways we bring our purpose and values to life. We exist to reinvent better connected living and hence reinvent for better inclusion for our employees and our customers in the markets where we operate. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive culture to encourage and enable everyone to be their best, most brilliant, and authentic selves, and ensure every talent is seen and every voice is heard.

We strive to provide equal opportunities to ensure employee rights and that our employees reflect the diversity of the customers and societies we serve. No employee shall be discriminated or treated differently because of their gender, gender identity or expression, ethnicity, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, social background and/or other characteristics protected by applicable law.

At Telia Company, we constantly work towards ways to make our company more inclusive. So far, we have met with success, but our efforts don’t stop here.  

Our public goals for Employee Diversity & Inclusion  

• 50/50 gender balance in the Extended Leadership team of Telia Company by 2025.
• Continuously decrease the raw gender pay gap.
• All managers trained in unconscious bias and inclusive recruitment practices by 2023.
• Conduct a voluntary diversity, belonging and equality survey to understand a wider set of workforce diversity aspects and needed interventions by 2024. 
• Increase diversity at Telia Company and in the tech sector through continuous partnerships focusing on digital and tech re-skilling & up-skilling.
• Ensure that diversity & inclusion aspects permeate our TV & Media business on and off-air.

Status as of 2022

• Gender Balance in the Extended Leadership Team: 41% Female & 59% Male.
• Common equal pay and parity analysis carried out in all markets. The raw gender pay gap decreased by 1 percentage point in 2022 (12%), compared to 13% in 2021.

The raw pay gap* is mainly due to a gender imbalance on certain senior levels rather than unequal pay for equal or similar job. Much of the remaining differences can be attributed to the gender separation of professions (for example more men in technology and commercial roles and more women in support functions and customer service). Telia’s job family “tech” (that includes IT-related jobs) has for example only 20% female employees. On the other hand, Telia has approximately 37% of female employees, female managers and female top executives, meaning that vertical careers are possible for women in Telia. The Telia raw gender pay gap mirrors the gender parity imbalance in the tech and IT sector in general. To continuously decrease the raw pay gap, Telia actively works with increasing parity in professions, meaning attracting more women to our tech roles, promoting more female senior managers in tech and commercial roles and to inspire girls and women to choose a technical education/reskilling opportunity. To ensure equal pay for equal work, Telia has a thorough job evaluation process, which serves as a basis for the annual salary survey and is used in connection with new hires and internal mobility. The rewards team conducts a yearly common equal pay analysis for all countries to detect any unjustifiable differences, which are then corrected according to a set time plan. The analysis also contains a gender parity analysis to identify the structural gaps in job families and management levels, and serves as a basis for the gender equality action plan.

• 63% managers took the Unconscious Bias e-learning and 66% managers have been trained on Inclusive Recruitment Practices
• Following a second pilot diversity and inclusion employee survey that was performed in 2022, a large scale one is being currently planned
• Continued virtual meet-ups with immigrants to showcase opportunities through vocational tech and IT re-skilling, together with external organizations specializing in re-skilling.
• Awareness raising seminars and workshops on biases conducted for TV4 staff
• Continued progress made at TV4, with awareness raising seminars and workshops on biases.

More information can be found on pages 96-98 in the 2022 Annual and Sustainability Report. 

• Moreover, Telia Company strives towards a life and family friendly workplace, offering parental leave to both mothers and fathers according to local legislation and in most countries additional monetary supplements set by the local collective bargaining agreement or similar. Telia Company provides both mothers and fathers with the opportunity to take parental leave, as well as absence to take care of a child. Telia Company also complies to all local legislation when it comes to caregiver leave.

• The opportunity of flexi-work and remote work, an important enabler to successfully combine family and work, has since long been part of Telia’s ways of working, even pre-COVID. For further reading on our post-Covid model, please visit our well-being webpage.
• High unionization and usage of collective bargaining and/or similar agreements with the unions, regarding both base pay and bonuses, means that Living Wage in our own operations is a non-issue, across our markets.

* The raw gender pay gap, also known as the unadjusted pay gap, is defined as the difference between the average earnings of men and women, relative to the average earnings of men.