Human rights

Our aim is to know, show and manage our human rights impacts, risks and opportunities. With good faith efforts, our ambition is to improve over time and to be considered an industry leader in human rights.

Challenges

Issues related to human rights, such as customer privacy, freedom of expression and surveillance privacy can pose a risk to users of telecom services. As an international group of companies with sourcing from tens of thousands of local and international suppliers, we need to manage supply chain-specific human rights risks such as child and forced labor, labor rights and basic health and safety provisions.

Our approach

The work is guided by the Group Policy – Human Rights.

We are committed to a number of international guidelines on human rights, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, Global Compact principles, Children’s Rights & Business Principles and the Global Network Initiative (GNI) principles on freedom of expression and privacy. Specific commitments are further laid out in our Code of Responsible Business Conduct and in specific group policies on e.g. customer privacy, freedom of expression and surveillance privacy, and people. Human rights requirements on suppliers are covered in the Supplier code of conduct.

Human rights work is coordinated by a cross-functional working group which facilitates policy coordination, shared learning, analysis, business integration and alignment. Progress and risks are regularly reported to Group management and the Board.

Human Rights Impact Assessments

We undertake human rights due diligence and also more in-depth human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) to better understand local and group-level impacts, risks and opportunities.
To share insights, we have published HRIA reports based on assessments of our operations carried out by the independent non-profit organization BSR in eight of our markets. The reports containing conclusions and recommendations can be found here.

More information can be found in our Annual and Sustainability Report.

Grievance – Speak-Up Line

Telia Company strives to provide and promote grievance mechanisms for raising concerns without fear of retaliation or reprisal. The whistle-blowing tool Speak-Up Line enables employees and others to anonymously report violations of proper accounting, reporting or internal controls, as well as non-compliance with local laws or breaches of the Code of Responsible Business Conduct, group policies and instructions. Telia Company has a group-wide standard for performing internal investigations. The guiding principle is to ensure that investigations are conducted objectively and impartially; are carried out in a way to swiftly establish the facts with minimum disruption to the business or the personal lives of employees; and to make sure that confidentiality and non-retaliation are respected at all times.