Vodafone’s track record in social aspects of ESG supportive | Insights | Bloomberg Professional Services

This analysis is by Bloomberg Intelligence Industry Analyst Erhan Gurses. It appeared first on the Bloomberg Terminal.

Vodafone leads the European telecom sector in regards to gender diversity in the workforce. The carrier’s past record in the investigations of anti-competitive conduct limits concerns about future risks. Data privacy and security practices have room for improvement, though recent incidents have been financially immaterial to the group.

Vodafone leads in female participation in workforce

Vodafone boasts leading positions with regards to female participation in workforce. Women represent 40% of the carrier’s 96,941 employees, the highest among European telecom peers, and occupy 31% of management roles, the third highest and slightly below the 32% at leader Telenor. The company maintains the ambition for further improvement, targeting 40% female representation in management roles by 2030. The 50% representation at board level before the CEO Nick Read’s exit gives credence to Vodafone’s wider gender diversity ambitions.

Vodafone has also set targets for ethnic diversity, aiming for 25% representation at global senior leadership positions, vs. 18% in March 2022.

Anti-competitive conduct track record limits concerns

Vodafone often faces financial and reputation risks from investigations of anti-competitive conduct as a carrier operating in highly competitive and regulated markets. But the company’s past track record is supportive, limiting concerns about risks. There have been relatively few examples of anti-competitive accusations made against Vodafone in recent years, and penalties were low when the company was found to have engaged in anti-competitive conduct. There were no fines imposed by competition authorities against Vodafone in the latest fiscal year, though one new ongoing investigation is instigated by the competition regulator in Turkey.

The company’s commitment to anti-bribery and corruption training is important given the heightened risk in operating in developing and frontier markets.

 Data privacy and security practices have room for improvement

Given the sensitive nature of the information transmitted across telecom networks, carriers have core responsibility to manage data security and privacy and face reputation and financial risks if they fail to do so. Vodafone has suffered limited data privacy breaches recently, fined €2 million in the last fiscal year (€20 million in the prior year), primarily relating to telesales and customer authentication practices in Spain. The company responded by establishing a dedicated task force to improve privacy.

Vodafone’s only serious security breach last year was in Portugal, where a cyber-attack-led network outage caused €5 million in direct damages. The company follows the leading industry security standards, with a team of more than 1,000 people specializing in data protection, helping to cap the risks.