Accelerating growth through technology that is responsible, inclusive and sustainable

In nearly every aspect of life the pace of change is accelerating. Standing still isn’t an option. We can – and must – harness the pace of technology change for good. To survive, businesses must keep pace with change. But to really thrive, businesses must lead it but in the right way.  

That’s why in 2021, we launched the BT Group Manifesto, which sets out how we’ll accelerate growth through technology that’s responsible, inclusive and sustainable.

In BT Group’s Manifesto you will find our own ambitious goals for change: our net zero carbon and circular economy pathways; our targets to help build our customers’ digital skills; our ambition to build a diverse digital talent pipeline.

  • New technology must earn trust and transform life for the better.

    We aim to become the world’s most trusted connector of people, devices and machines. That’s a big ambition, but as a leading tech and tech enabler business, we know it’s not enough to minimise harms - we must connect for good.

    We’re applying our responsible tech principles across our whole value chain, ensuring we develop, buy, use and sell technology in a way that benefits people and minimises harms.

    For Good

    Accountable

    Fair

    Open

    We’re leveraging our responsible approach to build trust in new tech and make our solutions inclusive. This will help us differentiate our propositions and lead in future growth areas and innovation.

    We launched an AI accelerator – shortening new AI rollout time by over 90%, and built with security and ethics in mind.

    We strive to only buy products and services from responsible companies – suppliers are required to meet our standards, and we monitor risks and compliance through assessments and audits. 

    We started embedding our ‘Responsible AI for Buyers’ guide into our supplier onboarding processes.

    We continued to do due diligence on our suppliers. 

    We want to make sure our products and services are used for good. We focus on protecting privacy and free expression and helping to prevent online harms. We support the Global Network Initiative (GNI) Principles on Freedom of Expression and Privacy. 

    We developed our data ethics standard which sets out how we use responsible tech principles to determine what’s ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ when deciding why and how to process data (personal or otherwise).

    We created our Responsible AI standard for building, buying and using ethical AI. It will help mitigate risk at every AI lifecycle stage – from conception to real world monitoring. 

    Through our sales due diligence process, we work to make sure that our customers use our products and services in a way that benefits people and minimises harms. 

    We further enhanced sales due diligence in our Business unit. This will help us better identify and address potential human rights impacts of our products and services.

  • The future of tech must be inclusive and diverse for everyone to benefit.

    We’ve set bold targets for diversity in our own business, but we know there’s still a lot to be done to make sure we build a truly equitable and inclusive culture across BT Group.

    Creating a more inclusive digital landscape will help us drive productivity, innovation and growth for our business and for the UK

    We’ve set some big ambitions to improve inclusion and diversity within our workforce.

    We’re making progress in our ethnic minority representation, with notable gains against our targets. But we’re clear there’s much more to be done.

    Read more about our diversity and inclusion work.

    Building on our Digital Skills resources and partnerships, we’ve reached a total of 19.3 million with digital skills support since 2014/15. We’re aiming to reach 25 million by the end of March 2026. 

    4.6 million people

    This year, we’ve reached a further 4.6 million people with help to improve their digital skills – from small businesses and jobseekers through the Avado FastFutures programme to helping young people learn how to stay safe and be kind online with EE PhoneSmart, and uniting against online hate with EE Hope United.

    We’re working to develop the right digital infrastructure, so no-one gets left behind. We aim to reach 25 million homes and businesses, including hard-to-reach rural communities with access to strong, secure, ultrafast, full fibre broadband.

    10.3 million

    We’ve reached more than 10.3 million UK homes and businesses with ultrafast full fibre broadband, and we continue to help more low-income households get online through the BT Home Essentials social tariff, Openreach’s Connect the Unconnected offer and through EE basics for discounted mobile.

    68%

    We've maintained the UK’s largest and fastest 4G mobile network, and continued the rollout of 5G that now reaches 68% of the population in the UK.

  • Technology must accelerate our journey to net zero emissions and a circular world.

    We’ve already switched to renewable electricity – and now we’re pushing further by decarbonising our buildings, making them more energy efficient and building towards a circular BT Group.

    We’ve pledged to become a net zero emissions business by end of March 2031 for our own operations and by the end of March 2041 for our supply chain and customers emissions.1

    2031

    Reduce the carbon intensity of our operations by 87% by the end of March 2031, and cut supplier carbon emissions by 42% by 2031.

    100%

    We’re already using 100% renewable electricity worldwide.2

    We’re building towards a circular business by the end of March 2030 and a circular tech ecosystem by the end of March 2040, while protecting nature and biodiversity.

    1.8m

    This year, consumers returned 1.8m home hubs and set-top boxes – 83% of these were refurbished for reuse.

    190,000

    We collected 190,000 mobile devices through consumer and business trade-in schemes, all of which were reused or recycled.

    88.5%

    We recovered or recycled 88.5% of the waste produced from our operations worldwide – and 89.4% in the UK.

    We’ll help customers avoid 60 million tonnes of CO2e by the end of March 2030.

    We’re well placed to help customers cut emissions through full fibre broadband, high performance 5G solutions, and growth technologies like cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT). 

    We’ve helped customers avoid over 935,000 tonnes of carbon, mainly through full fibre broadband reducing personal or work-related travel. 

    We’ve introduced real-time energy and carbon dashboards for larger business customers to help them estimate their network’s carbon footprint and start to drive emissions reductions.

    1 Net zero target for operational emissions (scopes 1 and 2) by end of March 2031 and end to end emissions (scopes 1, 2 and 3) by end of March 2041.
    2 99.9% of the global electricity BT consumes is from renewable sources. The remaining 0.1% is where renewable electricity is not available in the market.

The BT Group Manifesto is taking us towards a bright sustainable future through technology.

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BT Group Manifesto
BT Group Manifesto

  • BT Group Manifesto

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Watch the BT Group Manifesto launch event replay