Three social factors that can bring additional revenue to telecom companies
Telecom companies today are consciously addressing the abovementioned risks, which will help improve their creditworthiness. While many telecom companies are already rolling out initiatives to seize opportunities, we argue that the following three factors – workplace attractiveness, digital inclusion, and cybersecurity services – need more attention.
Being a great place to work
Creating a great workplace is imperative for companies to attract and retain employees, as well as improve labour productivity. This includes promoting diversity, employee engagement, and a sense of employee belongingness. While the first two factors have been regularly integrated into company ESG practices and ESG ratings, the last –belongingness – is not implemented as often.
Diversity is an essential means to increase the confidence of employees and customers. Consultancies, companies, and rating agencies have emphasised its importance: for instance, Deloitte wrote in an article that more diverse workforces can play a multiplier effect on a company’s ESG performance and we fully subscribe to this idea. Diversity has also become an important focus for companies. ESG rating agencies are also taking it into account, for example, Sustainalytics scores on diversity programmes, gender pay disclosure and gender pay equality programmes.
A high level of employee engagement helps enhance labour enthusiasm as well as retention rates. It is often measured by employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) – and several companies in the technology, media and telecom sector have used eNPS as one of the KPIs when issuing their sustainability-linked loans.
Nurturing a sense of belongingness in the workplace is highly intertwined with diversity and engagement, but its importance to a company’s culture and prosperity means that it deserves to be treated separately and more seriously. In its ESG efforts, technology firm Wolters Kluwer reports a measure for “belonging”. It defines this measure as “the extent to which employees believe they can bring their authentic selves to work and be accepted for who they are”. We think that a healthy score on such a factor could improve productivity, and improve innovation because people feel free to talk.
Promoting employee belongingness can also entail setting up ventures that have their own purpose and organisational culture – for telecom companies, such ventures could be around cybersecurity. This is because employees may prefer to work for a fast-growing cybersecurity company over a larger corporate. By setting up smaller ventures, large corporates can attract and retain talent, as long as there is a fit for the wider corporate organisation. Furthermore, employees often choose to work for a firm with a clear purpose in society. Developing a relevant purpose should therefore be included in the design of a great place to work.
Because of its uniqueness, a sense of belongingness should be featured in ESG ratings, which could then encourage more companies to consider making efforts to improve the issue.
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