Deutsche Telekom Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report 2008
11 December 2008:
With “Connected Life and Work. Bringing people together. Embracing responsibility. Finding solutions.”, Deutsche Telekom presents its first detailed Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report available at http://www.reportalert.info/ra/profiles/DT/2008/?ID=24149
Deutsche Telekom’s core business is providing our society with all imaginable services and amenities required for a connected life and work. As one of world's leading ICT companies, our activities have a far-reaching impact. A critical factor for business success is maintaining our customers confidence that we are truly living up to our social commitments. Therefore, corporate responsibility is a key priority for our management.
Three of the greatest challenges we face are combating severe climate change, providing equal opportunities for all to participate in the IT world as well as enhanced services for connected life and work. New objectives were set for Deutsche Telekom's corporate responsibility measures on this basis and defined under the following fields of activity:
Low-carbon Society – different ways to create a society with lower CO2 emissions
ICT processes are inextricably linked with energy consumption and CO2 emissions. At the same time, they can also play a vital role in saving energy and reducing emissions. We are committed to finding solutions that equally enable us and our customers to play an effective role in protecting the environment: some of these are, for instance, a sustainable vehicle fleet, efficient resource and waste disposal management, development of products for digitalizing business processes, or modern communications solutions that are instrumental in reducing the number of business trips. Beyond these measures, T-Systems’ green IT concept is already playing a major part today in saving energy and reducing emissions.
Connect the unconnected – integration in the information and knowledge society
To properly leverage innovative technologies, it is not enough to simply have access to digital media, but also to develop the skillset to make use of these technologies.
Many people are denied access to digital media due to cultural, economic or health-related reasons. We encourage projects that enable these people to participate in our information and knowledge society. Thus, for instance, we have launched the Telekom@School initiative, providing all schools across Germany with free Internet access. We have also upgraded our broadband networks and developed products and services which help bridge the digital divide.
Connected Life and Work
Our contribution to connected life and work is part of our core business. We are keen on assisting employees, customers and stakeholders in improving their quality of life and work. To this effect, we have launched, among other projects, “Motiva”, the telemedicine project which is underway in the T-City of Friedrichshafen, as well as several other diversity programs.
Corporate Responsibility is a management concern
At the end of 2007, we began setting up a new, efficient organization structure responsible for Corporate Responsibility management throughout the Deutsche Telekom Group. All activities concerning sustainability and social commitment were bundled in one independent entity called Corporate Responsibility (CR) which is part of Corporate Communications in the Chairman's department. Another body is being set up in order to integrate and implement CR within the Group: the heads of all the relevant central departments will meet at least twice a year on the CR Board. The Board’s mandate is to ensure that the CR strategy interlinks closely with Group strategy and corporate values. In addition to these steps, Deutsche Telekom has, in previous years, adopted a range of CR-relevant policies which apply throughout the Group.
Source: Deutsche Telekom
