Sustainable Development Policy

Vision & Issues

Specific issues

Approach and Performance

Sustainable Development Policy

Vivendi’s contribution to sustainable development is its commitment to empowering present and future generations to fulfill their need to communicate, nourish their curiosity, develop their talent and encourage intercultural dialogue.

Vivendi conducts a stringent sustainable development policy that puts its economic, social, societal and environmental performance into perspective with regard to its business activities and its geographical locations. The sustainable development policy is backed up by specific commitments and guidelines.

Our main sustainable development issues

The sustainable development policy is founded on Vivendi’s characteristics as a Group that
produces and distributes content,
is at the core of the technological broadband and mobility evolutions,
is centered on the subscription model,
and gains new markets in countries undergoing rapid growth.

The first of those characteristics implies that the Group appraises the opportunities and risks its content and services can represent for various audiences. That is why Vivendi has defined three specific sustainable development issues:

The second characteristic involves Vivendi’s reconciling the digital revolution with recognition of the needs of its stakeholders (employees, customers, artists, suppliers, civil society, and others) and with regulatory requirements. Managing human capital, leveraging content, vigilance towards suppliers, and dialogue with partners are other significant sustainable development issues.

The third characteristic, the subscription business model, which accounts for 75% of the Group’s revenues, raises the issue of collection and processing of personal data of subscribers and customers of the Group business units. In all countries where Vivendi operates, the expectations of subscribers with regard to content offerings and services must be satisfied while at the same time keeping to a stringent policy of personal data management.

The fourth characteristic requires an evaluation of Vivendi’s contribution to local development in the countries where the Group operates – employment, investment in infrastructures, development of local talent and access to information and communication technologies, which is one of the keys to success in the education of young people.

Our specific issues

Through its business activities, Vivendi has a human, intellectual and cultural impact on society.
In 2003, three sustainable development issues specific to the Group’s content production and distribution activities were defined: the protection and empowerment of youth, the promotion of cultural diversity, and the sharing of knowledge. These three societal issues are keyed to evaluation criteria integrated into the Group senior executives’ variable remuneration (see the focus below).

It is Vivendi’s responsibility to accompany all segments of the public, and young people in particular, in their cultural and media practices, while working to build a more secure digital universe. It must reconcile the development of content and service offerings with protection of young audiences from uses or behaviors that could be harmful to them. For that issue to be taken into account groupwide, the business units work in close cooperation with Vivendi’s Sustainable Development team.

Vivendi aims to promote cultural diversity as a necessary manifestation of human dignity and a pillar of social cohesion. Sharing the vision of UNESCO, whose Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which entered into force in March 2007, states that cultural diversity is “a mainspring for sustainable development for communities, peoples, and nations,” Vivendi’s ambition is to encourage artistic creation in all its diversity, promote local talent, and sustain cultural heritage.

Encouraging the sharing of knowledge as a means of strengthening a spirit of openness towards others and mutual understanding is the third specific sustainable development issue identified by Vivendi. The Group has an obligation to promote pluralism of content, encourage dialogue between cultures, facilitate access to the information and communication technologies and raise public awareness of sustainable development issues.

Implementation of the policy

The Chairman of the Management Board regularly includes sustainable development issues on the agenda of meetings of the Management Board and the Risks Committee. Throughout the year, he brings together experts from civil society to share analysis of the development of the Group’s activities in the light of our sustainable development issues.
The Sustainable Development Department leads the process, in close association with the head-office functional divisions and the business units.

Progress in 2010 & perspectives for 2011-2012 (interactive version)
Progress in 2010 & perspectives for 2011-2012 (PDF)

Vivendi publishes its Sustainable Development Report each year. For the eighth consecutive year, the 2010 edition of Report has been examined and reported on by an external auditor, Salustro Reydel of KPMG International, one of Vivendi’s Auditors, regarding the procedures implemented by the group to report, validate and consolidate social and environmental performance indicators, with verification of a selection of indicators.

Vivendi is listed on several sustainable development indexes. Vivendi was ranked No. 1 ex aequo in the FTSE4Good ESG Ratings in April 2011. Vigeo ranked Vivendi in first place in the European media sector following its evaluation in December 2010. Vivendi was classified by Goldman Sachs among the five worldwide best placed companies in the media sector with regard to economic performance and sustainable development criteria (November 2009).

Focus

Inclusion of sustainable development criteria in senior executives’ variable remuneration

In 2010, sustainable development criteria were included in senior executives’ variable remuneration. This entails measuring their individual contribution to Vivendi’s strategic sustainable development issues – namely protecting and empowering youth, promoting cultural diversity, and sharing knowledge. Vivendi is the first CAC 40 company to integrate performance objectives of this type into the variable remuneration of senior executives.
Feeling a need for accompaniment during this pilot year, the Group called on the extrafinancial rating agency Vigeo to assess the achievement of goals based on the indicators and supporting documents provided by the business units. This external evaluation complements an internal process of self-assessment conducted by each business unit.
Among the goals chosen by them, we can mention the actions conducted by SFR and Maroc Telecom to reduce the digital gap, notably by facilitating accessibility to products and services for disabled or vulnerable persons; those of GVT in Brazil, which has chosen to deploy ambitious programs to accompany youth in their use of digital technologies; those of the Canal+ Group aimed at encouraging diversity in the films it broadcasts; and Universal Music Group’s commitment to promoting local talent in the emerging countries. Vivendi and its business units achieved their goals in 2010.