Dea
r friend,
Corporate responsibility is not a passing fad stirred up by academic debate. It is here to stay. Responsible business practices have become integral to many companies' strategic plans.
Customers, employees and shareholders demand greater integrity from modern companies. Society is also recognising that business is often well placed to be part of the solution and to help create social and economic progress. Beyond headline news, corporate responsibility promises to play a really important role in 21st century enterprise.
It is even more so for us; since we are one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world today with a strategy for greater growth and profitability. The size of our company can be seen in the sheer number of our stakeholders: over 200 million customers, 230,000 employees, 1.7 million shareholders and 20,000 suppliers in 23 countries.
At Telefónica we believe that corporate responsibility must also create value for our company. It must sit comfortably with our overall business vision, influence the way we interact with stakeholders and be absorbed thoroughly in our business structure and strategy. We do not see it as a 'plug-in', but as a way of life that guides our actions every day.
During 2006, Telefónica and O2 have learnt from each other in our first year together. I am pleased to announce that we took two important steps forward. We defined our new corporate vision and set out the Business Principles that govern the way we work. These Principles, ratified by the Board of Directors, combine our previous Code of Conduct with the Business Principles of O2. By adopting them across the Telefónica Group we aim to build a common culture of integrity wherever we operate in the world.
Our shared vision states that "We want to enhance people´s lives, the performance of businesses and the progress of the communities where we operate, by delivering innovative services based on information and communication technologies".
With this vision and framework in place, our next step is to turn words into facts. How will we do this? We aim to build strong relationships, to talk openly and to listen to many different groups in society.
We put our customers first. Their loyalty sustains our business, so we have a core goal to turn them into fans of our services by being the best at offering them the things they most want. To meet their demand for useful and trusted digital services we must also show that we operate responsibly towards them.
As well as adhering to the strict business principles that guide our behaviour we need to continue to add value to our business and, at the same time, put real effort into some of the issues we face. These include the work we are doing to tackle climate change, our commitments to child protection, digital inclusion, eradicating child labour, ethical procurement and the overriding ambition we have to make life better for the communities we serve.
But we want to go much further. It's not just about being seen to be doing the right thing. It's about ensuring we contribute to the sustainability and development of the modern world.
We are determined to promote social inclusion through ICT and to narrow the so-called digital divide. Telefónica is a major player here. Our business model, particularly in Latin America, is designed to reduce the gaps caused by economy, geography and lack of education. They include specially adapted tariffs for customers with scant resources, the spread of fixed and mobile broadband coverage, and more training in the use of ICT.
Lastly, our Proniño Programme is a great example. It allowed 25,339 children to return to school in 2006, freeing them from the scourge of child labour and enabling them to enjoy the potential of ICT in education.We also want EducaRed, our educational online tool for primary and secondary schools - which already connects over 25 million people - to become a catalyst for the development of technologies in education. In summary: our social actions will grow ever closer to our corporate mission.
Again this year, I would like to emphasize that Telefónica remains committed to the United Nations Global Compact. This initiative reflects our approach to CR: it is multistakeholder, global but also local, voluntary, and aimed at achieving business excellence.
If our numbers are big, so are the responsibilities that accompany them. We are clear that we have the opportunity to become one of the world's leading companies. But we are clear too that this will slip us by if we do not attend to our social, ethical and environmental responsibilities and our strong commitment to recognised international standards of best practice.
César Alierta
Executive Chairman and CEO, Telefónica S.A..
