Dialogue with stakeholders helps us to understand and prioritise corporate responsibility issues, and to identify new challenges and opportunities.
We talk to a wide range of stakeholders as part of normal business practice. This includes community representatives, customers, employees, investors, local and central government, the media, pressure groups, regulators, residents near our base station sites and offices, and suppliers. We also conduct research to help us understand and monitor stakeholder views.
Engagement with investors is coordinated at Group level.
Public policy
We meet regularly with politicians and government officials and collaborate in many government-industry initiatives on CR issues, including participation in
- The Home Office taskforce on child protection and the internet
- The Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum (MICAF)
We seek to inform government policy and legislation on issues that affect our business. Our activity is focused on a number of issues including:
- Street crime and theft
- The role of the mobile industry in preventing and responding to mobile theft
- Online child protection and the prevention of bullying
- Data retention and privacy issues
We are members of several industry associations including the Broadband Stakeholder Group, the Internet Service Providers Association, MICAF, the Mobile Broadband Group and the Mobile Operators Association.
Some dialogue with political stakeholders is carried out by industry associations on our behalf. We monitor this activity closely to ensure that it reflects our policies and values. A Vodafone representative attends most industry association meetings with politicians and all written materials, meeting agendas and briefing notes are approved by Vodafone before they are used.