At Airtel, we believe in regular and meaningful interaction with our stakeholders to enable us to understand evolving needs, take steps to mitigate risks and build on emerging opportunities.
Our framework for stakeholder engagement describes a strategy for interacting and collaborating with our stakeholders. It is implemented across various functions within the organisation.
The primary focus of our framework is to:
Airtel’s Stakeholder Engagement Procedure
The stakeholder engagement procedure is designed to encourage consistent interaction and build positive ties, starting with the identification, assessment, and ranking of stakeholder groups.
Stakeholder identification and prioritisation
Stakeholder
engagement
Understanding stakeholder’s concern
Develop strategic
response
Stakeholder identification and prioritisation
Stakeholder identification is strategically based on understanding the groups that are both impacted by Airtel and have an influence on our value creation.
Stakeholder
engagement
We have created tailored stakeholder engagement strategies to connect with all our stakeholders, considering their importance and impact.
Understanding
stakeholder’s concern
Our effective stakeholder engagement allows stakeholders to voice their concerns relevant to our business. We then prioritise addressing each concern raised through this process in a timely and dedicated manner.
Develop strategic
response
We create strategic action plans to align our business activities with stakeholder expectations.
Stakeholder engagement and outcomes
Materiality Assessment
At Airtel, we regularly undertake materiality assessments to identify and prioritise the sustainability issues that are most relevant to our operations and stakeholders. These concerns are crucial for identifying sustainability-related risks and opportunities, prioritising sustainability initiatives, and planning our reporting and disclosure activities. We conduct a materiality assessment every two to three years to gain a comprehensive understanding of the issues that could significantly affect our ability to create value.
How is materiality assessed at Airtel?
We engage with our internal and external stakeholders to gain awareness of the issues that concern our stakeholders the most and impact our business and thereby our value creation. A materiality assessment is conducted based on aspects like ESG impacts, business goals and priorities, and the needs and concerns of stakeholders.
A comprehensive materiality assessment exercise was conducted following GRI Standards and guided by AccountAbility's AA1000 principles (2018).
Materiality assessment process
Identification of potential material topics
We conducted a comprehensive desk review to identify a set of material topics relevant to Airtel. This included review of current and emerging telecom industry trends, risks and priorities along with review of peer practices of both Indian and Global telecom companies to identify sector-specific sustainability issues.
Stakeholder consultation
Following identification of potential material issues, stakeholder consultation were carried out to obtain insightful feedback.
Internal stakeholder consultation: We aimed to understand top management’s vision on business goals and emerging risks for Airtel, determine how sustainability issues feature in the organisation’s risk radar across departments, and incorporate their perceptions of important material issues into the materiality assessment.
External stakeholder consultation: We aimed to understand the key concerns and expectations of our stakeholders, gauge their satisfaction in engaging with Airtel, and incorporate their perceptions of important material issues into the materiality assessment.
Prioritisation of potential material issues
The final list of material topics for Airtel was developed after an in-depth analysis of the results from internal and external stakeholder consultations. Management perspectives were then used to categorise these material topics by their level of priority: Critical, High, or Moderate.
Development of materiality matrix
Survey results were aggregated to identify stakeholders’ areas of concern and prioritise material topics. Insights gathered from external and internal stakeholder engagements were analysed and synthesised with findings from the desk review to develop the materiality matrix.
Material Issues
The materiality assessment helps us identify risk parameters that are integrated across all management levels of the Company. These material issues are dynamic and vary based on changes in our external operating environment and the evolving expectations of our stakeholders. Our identified key material ESG issues were reviewed by Airtel’s senior management and are depicted in the form of a materiality matrix. The matrix categorises these material issues by their level of significance to the organisation and its stakeholders, ranking them as critical, high, or moderate.
Airtel Materiality Matrix
| Our material issues | SDG impacted | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Information security and customer data privacy |   |
| 2. | Talent attraction and human capital development |   |
| 3. | Corporate Governance and business ethics | |
| 4. | Climate change, energy efficiency and emission reduction |   |
| 5. | Enhancing customer experience and satisfaction | |
| 6. | Network quality, expansion, and transformation | |
| 7. | Regulatory compliance | |
| 8. | Innovation of products and services | |
| 9. | Employee health and well-being |  |
| 10. | Diversity and inclusion |  |
| 11. | Sustainable supply chain management |  |
| 12. | Promoting human rights | |
| 13. | Corporate citizenship and community development |  |
| 14. | Resource efficiency and waste management | |
| 15. | Fair marketing and advertising | |
| 16. | Digital inclusion and enhanced access to ICT | |
| 17. | Water efficiency | |
| 18. | Green ICT solutions | |