Better business
Better business
We’ve been transforming the media and entertainment industry for 30 years. We reach 120 million people across Europe. We have 31,000 brilliant colleagues at Sky and we work with 11,000 suppliers across the world. We believe the way we do business has a big impact on everyone. So we’re always looking for new ways to do the right thing for our customers, our people, our partners and the world.
Our customers
The best service. The highest editorial standards. The strongest privacy protections. And products that are safe, easy and enjoyable to use. It’s the least we can do for our customers.
Everyone should be able to enjoy the TV they love, when and how they want. So when we’re designing Sky products and services, we make them as accessible as we can. We work closely with our customers to get it right. With Sky Q, high contrast display, voice search, voice control and now voice guidance are available as standard, with voice over on the Sky Q app.
We also make audio-described content throughout our original TV series as well as 26% of content across our Sky channels. Our describers love the challenge of getting to the heart of the best new shows for our partially-sighted viewers. They have brought Game of Thrones, Patrick Melrose, Chernobyl and other unmissable series to life for them. Hear more about it here.
We’re adding more programmes with subtitles to all Sky Channels, and to our on-demand services. We’re also working with other broadcasters to make sure you can watch their on-demand subtitled content through Sky. Here’s a day in the life of our subtitling team.
We are a major funder of the British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust, to help promote its use in TV. We’re proud to exceed our quotas for subtitles and audio descriptions across all Sky channels.
To find out more about the tools we offer to support people with visual, hearing, dexterity or cognitive impairments, across everything we do, visit our accessibility website.
We aim to do more than anyone to put families first and to keep children safe. Sky Broadband Shield helps protect kids from content that’s not suitable for them, across all internet-connected devices. And our SPACETALK kids' watch lets children make and receive calls and texts from known contacts but doesn't have a camera, access to apps or social media.
The Sky Kids app gives each little one tailored content that’s right for their age. Families can also limit viewing time. It’s the first app to get the Mumsnet seal of approval.
As well as our great product features, we give families access to the latest and best advice to be safe online with our partnership with Internet Matters.
Sky plays an active role in industry discussions through our Board presence on the UK Council for Internet Safety (UKCIS), Internet Matters and the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). We have also shown policy leadership through the independent report we commissioned, ‘Keeping Consumers Safe Online: Legislating for platform accountability for online content’, with the ambition to make the UK the safest place to be online.
All of us are managing more of our lives through our phones. So we’re making it easier for customers to connect to Sky, on the go. Our My Sky Digital service app has been downloaded more than 1.9 million times and enables customers to check their broadband speed, review their monthly bill, change how and when they pay and get help.
In the UK, for another year, we topped the industry regulator’s customer service satisfaction charts.
Many customers have been with us for years, so we’ve launched loyalty programmes to thank our customers for choosing Sky.
Our ground-breaking 24-hour news channel reports on the issues shaping the world.
Sky News is an editorially independent part of Sky UK, overseen by an independent Sky News Board and with its own editorial and ethics policies. Sky News is part of the Trust Project, an international campaign to increase transparency and trust in news.
Our people
We have over 34,000 talented colleagues across Europe. We’re making Sky a great workplace for everyone – a place where we can all do the best work of our lives.
To serve our customers, our team needs to represent them. We welcome people from all walks of life into our Sky team and we’re passionate about treating everyone fairly and with respect. From recruitment to development, we focus on inclusivity at every stage of the Sky experience.
Inside Sky, eight employee-led networks champion diversity and offer support: women@sky, LGBT+@sky, Multiculture@Sky, the Sky unity programme, Parents@Sky, Armed Forces@Sky and Body&Mind@Sky and, in Germany, DifferentlyAbled@Sky. These thriving networks provide peer-to-peer support. They give communities within Sky a collective voice, to champion the things that matter most to them.
Through a survey every six months, we listen to our people. We compare scores between demographic groups to see if people are having a shared experience of working here. And we take action to create fairness when we identify a gap.
To bring fresh perspectives into the business and give young people a break in their early careers, we offer work experience and internships. Some are targeted at people from under-represented backgrounds. Visit our Early Careers web page to find out more.
To make sure a diverse group of people are getting opportunities to enter the industry, we work closely with independent production companies, as well as organisations like the Journalism Diversity Fund and the Creative Diversity Network.
We are support industry-wide programmes including BAFTA Elevate and Mama Youth, programmes which encourage diversity and inclusion in film and TV.
We’re increasing our investment in original, locally-produced content on TV, to make sure the lives of people in all our markets are reflected on-screen. Sky Sports are proud supporters of Stonewall's Rainbow Laces campaign, combating homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in sport and society.
We celebrate diversity. Because different people, with different perspectives make Sky a better business. Achieving a better gender and ethnic balance is important to us, so we’re investing in programmes to help us get there.
Representation and progression
In June 2020, Sky announced a series of commitments to support anti-racism and improve diversity and inclusion across the company. Sky committed to invest £10million per year across its markets for each of the next three years to improve representation and progression of minority groups.
This year we announced our new Diversity Advisory Council: seven leaders in diversity and inclusion who will be responsible for advising and guiding our business on issues of diversity, including using our voice externally, and helping to maintain our progress towards becoming a more inclusive organisation.
We want Sky to better reflect the communities in which we live and work. In the UK and Ireland, we’ve set new targets for 20% of employees at Sky to be from Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background by 2025. This target includes at least 5% Black representation and applies to all levels of our business, including our leadership teams.
Teams within Sky UK and Ireland will set specific targets based on the demographics of where they are based, colleague attrition and progression opportunities. Meeting these targets is built into our Executive’s objectives. Find out more.
On-screen, we also have targets to make sure our entertainment, news and sports output is as representative as possible.
We are long-term supporters of the MAMA Youth Project, which provides media and TV training to young people from under-represented groups. And we’re proud to be listed on the Diversity Leaders 2020.
Gender
We’ve been publishing our annual Gender Pay Gap Reports since March 2018. Like most organisations our gender pay gap is caused by having proportionally more men than women in our higher pay quartiles. Whilst we have seen progress, the key driver for our remaining pay gap is that there are more men in our most senior positions and in our higher paying role types such as tech or digital.
Our 2020 Gender Pay Gap Report is below.
We’re focused on improving our talent pipeline and reducing our gender pay gap. We have targets and dedicated programmes to address underrepresentation and know our “try before you apply” programmes like Women in Home service are working.
Internally our employee ‘Women@Sky’ network enables both men and women to connect and share experiences and provides personal development activities for network members. With the input of our Parents@Sky network, we have a flexible and family-friendly culture to better support people juggling home and work responsibilities: we provide a range of on-site services, have improved technology, enhanced paternity/secondary carer leave and have introduced an emergency family care benefit. Combined with our generous maternity and shared parental leave, we've giving parents and carers great choices to balance careers and family.
We’ve also been recognised as one of the Times Top 50 employers for Women for 5 years running.
You can view all our reports here.
Led by our people
In 2020, the Unity Programme was established by a group of Sky employees. The Programme focuses on raising cultural awareness, education and amplifying the voice of the Black community.
In Sky Italia the ‘Cantiere Inclusion – Community Direction’ is a new cross-department team working on Diversity and Inclusion, in particular on gender balance, LGBT+, ethnicity, culture and mindset.
We are long-term supporters of the MAMA Youth Project, which provides media and TV training to young people from under-represented groups. And we’re proud to be listed on the Best Employers for Race 2018.
Read more about Inclusion at Sky on our careers pages
Find our people data our latest Bigger Picture Impact Report
Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity
At Sky, we have a zero-tolerance policy against discrimination of any kind towards someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Through our content, and our company culture, we work closely with our LGBT+@Sky network to use the power of our platform to change hearts and minds. Our LGBT+@Sky employee network helps create an environment where everyone can #JustBe, with year-round activities and events.
We’re proud partners of Stonewall and through their Workplace Equality Index, we’ve been listed as the #1 Media Company in the UK for LGBT+ inclusion and our LGBT+@Sky Network was awarded Highly Commended. We’ve also been named Corporation of the Year by the British LGBT Awards for our work in supporting our LGBT+ colleagues, customers, and communities
We have thousands of talented colleagues, working in different countries, on everything from content to technology to customer service. We’d like to think they all have jobs they love, and that Sky enables them to do the best work of their lives.
Our staff engagement levels consistently outperform external benchmarks in the UK and Italy. We also focus on safety and our field-teams’ safety culture exceeds the UK benchmark. We support people’s wellbeing through great workplace design, culture, employee benefits and our employee-led networks. And we offer digital learning opportunities that are available anytime, to everyone.
Our suppliers
Without our suppliers we wouldn’t be able to do what we do. We’re committed to great partnerships, respecting and protecting the rights of everyone we work with.
Throughout our supply chains, we have a shared understanding of human rights, environmental and governance principles, to drive the way we work together. Meeting our supplier Code of Conduct and supporting sustainability policies is part of our standard terms and conditions for suppliers.
We believe that collaboration also helps achieve long-term positive change. That’s why we’re members of the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA), Centre for Sport and Human Rights and TV Industry Human Rights Forum. We're committed to the Sporting Chance Principles and working with our suppliers to implement the RBA Code of Conduct.
We tailor our due diligence, training for our people, and support to suppliers based on our impact and risk assessments. We conduct human rights, health, safety and environmental audits on tier one, two and three suppliers, including those pre-contract, for the lifecycle of our products, from raw materials to the recyclers that dismantle our products at end-of-life. We support our suppliers to make changes if necessary as a result of these audits. Our audit teams also attend third party audits and offer training to help our suppliers make sustainable improvements.
We also support our suppliers’ risk assessments across their own supply chains. This helps ensure their partners are working to our high standards. We help them to make changes if necessary.
We’re committed to continuing to eliminate single-use plastic in our supply chain, and sourcing all our wood and paper from sustainably managed sources. We require all wood and paper to be recycled, FSC, or PEFC certified. Find out more about our single-use plastic and wood and paper purchasing policy here.
We manufacture products which use minerals and are committed to making informed choices about responsibly sourced minerals in our product supply chains. To identify high-risk minerals, we work through the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), using the Responsible Minerals Assurance Process (RMAP). Our approach is set out in our Conflict Minerals Policy, and we report annually on our progress in our Impact report.
We respect everyone’s human rights at Sky. We do the right thing by everyone we reach: our colleagues, contractors, customers, viewers, people who feature in our content, workers in our supply chains, visitors to our sites and the communities around them.
Our policies and approach to human rights are based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions. Our Human Rights Policy, Conflict Minerals Policy and Ways of Working set out our expectations for upholding human rights. We publish our Modern Slavery Statement annually.
As our understanding of the risks evolves, so does our approach. Our human rights leadership group brings representatives from across the business together. It’s their role to address any issues that arise and to identify opportunities for us to take the lead. We also train all our people, from our production teams to the people taking calls on our helpline.
Our environmental impact
We have to act on the environment to protect our world and our business over the long-term. So we’re taking a bold position. We’ve set out to become net zero carbon by 2030. We’re pushing ourselves to transform. And we’re using our reach and our voice to make a difference.
Reducing emissions
To help limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, our targets must be credible and verifiable, and reduce carbon emissions in real terms. Our SBTi-approved target is to halve our absolute carbon emissions by 2030 and covers emissions from our own operations (Scopes 1 and 2) and our entire value chain (Scope 3).
We’ve achieved our 2020 target to source 100% renewable electricity across all the sites we use, through on-site renewable generation, renewable energy tariffs or, where we don’t control and can’t influence the energy supply, traceable renewable energy certificates aligned to the location, generated and retired from the market the same year as the electricity use.
We have already achieved a 55% reduction in our carbon intensity and a 39% reduction in business travel emissions. We send 0% of waste from Sky-owned sites to landfill. We recycle 100% of food waste at our main offices and have successfully reduced water consumption per person too. This year we also increased fuel efficiency across our fleet by 15%, so have achieved six of our ten targets ahead of time. We are now setting our path towards net zero carbon by 2050 across our value chain.
Read more about our environmental performance in our Bigger Picture Impact Report.
In 2006, we become the world’s first carbon neutral media company. By 2020 We had already more than halved our operational carbon intensity and reduced business travel emissions by almost 40%. No waste goes to landfill from Sky-owned sites across the Group, and we repair, refurbish or recycle 100% of the products returns to us.
In 2017, we committed to change our products and packaging to remove all single-use plastic. We started with the NOW TV Smart Stick, Sky Soundbox and Sky Q box. We replaced the traditional plastic seals and bags with natural adhesives, cork pads and layered cardboard, to protect each product in an environmentally-friendly way. Since the end of 2018, all our products have been free of single-use plastic.
Our service model for Sky Q boxes and new broadband contracts means Sky retains ownership of the equipment, so we can ensure every box we’ve made is in use, refurbished or recycled, increasing resource efficiency. We’ve also made design improvements that allow us to refurbish more products and replace some parts without dismantling set-top boxes. So we’re now refurbishing more Sky Q boxes than we manufacture.
Find out how to return your old Sky products for repair, refurbishment or recyclings.
We are also reducing the amount of energy our products consume with each new model. And we’ve created a dedicated team within Group Product, working to find ways to drive significant new energy efficiencies to existing models in customers’ homes, through software updates. They’re exploring every aspect of how and when our boxes are used and their energy consumption. They’ve already identified efficiencies that we’ll be rolling out later this year.
In the UK, we were founding members of albert, an industry-governed organisation tackling the environmental impact of TV production. It’s now in its 10th year, and we’re proud to be joining albert’s International Partnership, rolling out albert’s sustainable production tools across all of Sky’s territories. We’re also founding members of the new albert sports consortium and most recently launched news consortium.
All Sky Sports, Sky Studios and Sky-commissioned UK productions undergo albert sustainable production certification and calculate their carbon emissions. Since 2019, all UK-commissioned Sky Originals have been carbon neutral. In Germany we’ve been part of the Green Shooting working group since 2017, who are now targeting 100 sustainable productions by the end of 2021.
We’ve published new Sustainable Production Principles; clear, industry-leading guidelines to help productions lower emissions, eliminate single-use plastic and achieve albert certification. The Principles also introduce a new Planet Test to support production, editorial and commissioning teams to consider how the programme could create positive change and awareness.
Building work is well underway for the new Sky Studios Elstree which aims to be the world’s most sustainable film and TV production studios when it opens in 2022.
Read more about Sky Sports and sustainability
Sharing what we learn
In 2017, we set out to remove all single-use plastic from our business and supply chain by 2020. We’re using our voice to campaign for change, working with WWF to inspire action on ocean pollution. And our Sky Ocean Ventures fund has invested millions to support innovative alternatives to single-use plastic.
We’re sharing our knowledge to help others take action. Find out more by downloading our reports.
Contributing to culture
We strengthen the cultural economy, in all our markets. We invest in robust independent news reporting, in the Arts, in sports and in original local content. We are part of the cultural fabric of the nation, creating jobs and boosting the economy
We’re proud to pay our fair share of taxes, and paid over £1.7 billion in tax last year across Sky Group.
Read more about…
Sky Studios and our investment in original content
We create jobs, for people from all walks of life. We employ over 34,000 people and we support the jobs of over 400,000 people (this figure was independently calculated by Oxford Economics in July 2019).
Find out more about how we invest in the next generation through Sky Scholars, Sky Academy Studios and Mama Youth.
We want to make a positive impact in the communities in which we live and work. So we build local and national partnerships with charities through our Sky Cares volunteering programme.
We use the Business for Societal Impact for Societal Impact (B4SI) model to analyse our community contribution. Our total societal contribution, through community initiatives, Sky Ocean Ventures and procurement is more than £27.2m, up from £23.4m in 2019. Through our people’s payroll giving and matchfunding, customer donations to emergency appeals, and impact investment partnerships, we’ve leveraged another £1.3m on top of this.
