Diversity & inclusion

Tele2 strives for an established, diverse and inclusive culture across all of our business. Differences are recognized and valued so that everyone can perform at their best. We truly believe that diversity fuels action and creativity.

With the ambition to be the smartest telco in the world, we know that the more diverse we are, the smarter we become when we combine our efforts. As such, we welcome diversity from all perspectives: Sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, generation, background, disabilities, experiences and more.

By bringing together individuals from diverse backgrounds and providing each person with opportunities to develop their skills, we strive to deliver the best customer experience, provide excellent shareholder value and to have highly engaged employees.

A long and exciting journey

Our commitment for diversity and inclusion is a long and exciting journey. Despite our efforts so far, we have still much more work to do. As such, we set clear ambitions and specific targets each year, to make sure we can measure our efforts and improvements so far.

Our ambition

We aim to build an inclusive environment where diverse talent can perform at their best, and at the same time, a gender balanced workforce with 40% females and 60% males across all levels* by 2023.

*By ‘across all levels’, we mean the distribution of females and males among employees, managers as well as executive leaders.

Targets 2021

Our targets for 2021

We have defined overarching targets for 2021 that are linked to our ambition and sets the foundation for our Diversity & Inclusion efforts. As the world around us changes, we will update our targets annually.

INCLUSION

30% managers trained in inclusion (2020: 0%)

INCLUSION

30% employees trained in inclusion (2020: 0%)

GENDER

35% female employees (2020: 33%)

GENDER

60% external hires will be female (2020: 55%)

Our organization today

Our focus on diversity and inclusion is a long-term commitment and generating meaningful change in a large organization demands long-term efforts. Its therefore important to both recognize where we are now, as well as the fact that some numbers simply cannot be changed dramatically over a year, or even several years. Here are some key data of the current state of the Tele2 organization (full year 2020):

Full Tele2 Group organization:

Employee gender diversity: 44% female, 56% male.
Senior Executives in Group Leadership Team: 33% female, 67% male.

Tele2 Sweden only:

Employee Age diversity: 18,5% below 30 years old, 58,8% between 30 and 50 years old, and, 22,7% above 50 years old
Employee Foreign-origin diversity: 13,8% foreign-born employees
Manager Foreign-origin diversity: 13,04% foreign-born managers
Employee gender diversity: 33% female, 67% male.
Manager gender diversity: 31% female, 69% male.

We constantly measure and explore options to improve and increase the scope of our data related to diversity and inclusion. For example, we are looking into how we can report diversity in a way that better reflect that gender is not binary.

Diversity & Inclusion in action

The foundation for Tele2’s efforts:

We treat everyone with dignity and respect, with zero tolerance for discrimination
We value everyone's contribution and provide the freedom and tools needed to make work both more efficient and ever enjoyable
We base our decisions affecting employment, performance, training, promotion and career development on individual abilities and genuine professional requirements

Priorities for 2021

Examples of our efforts and results so far:

3rd best Swedish company in Equileap’s gender equality study: In 2022, Equileap researched over 3,800 companies based on 19 gender equality criteria, including gender balance from the board to the workforce, as well as the pay gap and policies relating to parental leave and sexual harassment. Tele2 is the only telco among top 10 companies in Sweden.

Education on Diversity & Inclusion: In 2021, a new workshop has been launched to educate managers and employees on unconscious bias and inclusion habits.

Inclusive leadership: all our leaders are measured on Diversity & Inclusion. During the last years, we have seen a significant improvement and as of today all our scores, across all diversity perspectives are above the benchmark.

External views and feedback: We have conducted a ‘Make Equal assessment’ in our large customer operations and stores organizations. Make Equal is an external organization that analyzed the Diversity & Inclusion situation at Tele2 and highlighted to us our Diversity & Inclusion strengths and opportunities, to keep us on track.

Unbiasing recruitment: We have analyzed and reviewed our recruitment process to ensure equal opportunities to all. We count with a modern assessment tool to ensure all candidates have the same chance to join us.

Our 2+1 principle: When it comes to recruitment we follow two important principles: 1) we always hire the best candidate, and 2) we strive to hire two women for every one man. We see that this has had a clear impact on improving our gender diversity across different departments and levels at Tele2. In 2018, we recruited 30% female, in 2020 we hired 55% female and we have a goal for 2021 to ensure that 60% of our external recruitments are female.

Our leaders care: We have tied parts of managers short-term incentives to the achievement of Tele2’s gender diversity goals.

Commitment to goals: We ensure all business units have their own ownership and clarity on their own gender diversity targets on top of our company-wide goals.

Equal work, equal payment: At Tele2, we are strongly committed to gender pay equality. We annually conduct a gender pay gap analysis to ensure equal pay for the same kind of position or job. Today Tele2 comes out well in our gender pay gap analysis; we immediately address any needed actions and a contingency plan is set-up for up to 3 years so we can continue monitoring and measuring the results. The differences in pay at Tele2 is mainly due to our gender imbalance in senior level positions rather than unequal pay due to gender for the same kind of position or job. This is something we actively work on as part of our diversity work to further achieve a gender balanced workforce.

Policies that support Diversity & Inclusion

Diversity & Inclusion Policy: Tele2’s vision is to be the smartest telco in the world, creating as society of unlimited possibilities. We believe we can only achieve this by ensuring that our workforce reflects our diverse customer base to develop propositions that better meet their needs, creating commercial advantage.

Tele2 Code of Conduct: Tele2 is committed to conducting its business at the highest ethical standard. We have adopted this Code of Conduct to ensure all employees and affiliates are aware of what is expected from them.

Policy against discrimination and sexual harassment: Tele2 does not accept any form of harassment or other abusive treatment at the workplace. Every employee has a responsibility to contribute to creating a good working environment and to counteract any form of discrimination. Managers have the responsibility to ensure that our policy is well known, followed by their respective teams, and have the responsibility to investigate and act immediately in case of any issues. All Tele2 managers are offered educational resources on how to respond in case of any suspected harassment or abusive treatment. We also adhere to the Swedish Discrimination Act.

Whistleblowing Policy: Everyone that works at or with Tele2 is the ears and eyes of the company, and often the first to know when there is any ‘wrongdoing’. To be able to act, decisionmakers in the company first need to know of any wrongdoing. Therefore, we want to promote a culture in which employees feel confident and comfortable to act and report when they see any wrongdoing.

Impact on UN Sustainable Development Goals

All United Nations Member States have agreed to 17 Global Goals (officially known as the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs). These goals aim to create a better world by 2030, by ending poverty, fighting inequality and addressing the urgency of climate change. It is now up to all of us, governments, businesses, civil society and the general public to work together to build a better future for everyone. Tele2’s Diversity & Inclusion efforts contributes to the following goals:

UN SDG #5: Gender equality

5.1 End discrimination against women and girls - Tele2 has a dedicated anti-discrimination policy, and promotes and monitors gender equality.
5.5 Ensure full participation in leadership and decision-making - Tele2 has set a goal to be gender-balanced in executive and managerial roles, to ensure full and effective participation for women and equal opportunities for leadership.

UN SDG #10: Reduced inequalities

10.2 Promote universal social, economic and political inclusion
10.3 Ensure equal opportunities and end discrimination

Confronting gender imbalances head-on

Tele2 is a signatory of the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles. Our diversity and inclusion efforts are seen by UN Women as leading in the area regarding principle 2 “Treat all women and men fairly at work – respect and support human rights and non-discrimination”. Based on this, UN Women decided to do a case study on Tele2. The case study, titled “Confronting gender imbalances head-on”, highlights several of the lessons that we have learnt on our journey towards a gender balanced organization, including the importance of setting ambitious targets, implementing measures that are simple and easy to visualize, and sometimes allowing for a longer recruitment process.