more yes! - optus · • living more yes by engaging employees in our cultural change and providing...

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2014 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT

MORE YES!

MARKETPLACE & CUSTOMERS

COMMUNITY PEOPLE ENVIRONMENT

3OPTUS 2014 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT

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ABOUT THIS REPORTThis report covers our financial year 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014. It’s our 15th annual report on the economic, social and environmental performance of SingTel Optus Pty Limited (Optus). Offshore ventures, franchised retail outlets and subsidiaries are not included in this report, unless otherwise specified.

We welcome your feedback. Please contact [email protected] with any questions you may have.

GLOBAL REPORTING INITIATIVEWe’ve used the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines in the development of this report – at the self-assessed ‘A’ level. There’s a summary GRI Index at the end of this report and a full Index is online at www.optus.com.au/gri.

LONDON BENCHMARKING GROUP Optus uses the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) methodology to measure and report on our contribution to the community. LBG is the global standard for measuring and benchmarking corporate community investment.

OPTUS 2014 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT

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TABLE OF CONTENTSAbout this Report 3

Group Chief Executive Officer Message 4

Singtel Optus Message 5

About us 6

Highlights 14

Marketplace & Customers 15

Community 28

People 42

Environment 52

Awards & Recognition 62

GRI Index 64


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A MESSAGE FROM CHUA SOCK KOONG GROUP CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

SINGTEL GROUP

This year marks a significant milestone for the SingTel Group as we celebrate 135 years of telecommunications services. Our roots go right back to 1879 when telephones were first introduced in Singapore.

Since then, the telecommunications industry has changed significantly with the emergence of new technologies. What’s important is that a company stays true to its core purpose and values.

Our Australian subsidiary, Optus, was founded on a little promise more than 20 years ago. It was one small word, but it made a huge difference to the telecommunications landscape in Australia. That word was simple … it was ‘Yes’.

Over the past 12 months, Optus has made a lot of progress delivering More Yes. Their strategy is to provide value to all our stakeholders – our shareholders, customers, employees, local communities and the environment.

We undertook a strategic review of the SingTel Group’s sustainability strategy including Optus in Australia. We’ve established a shared community mission in Australia to enable inclusion and wellbeing of vulnerable young people, helping them to realise their potential through our digital technologies and innovative programs.

We also saw an opportunity to learn from each other and to share experiences as we build a best practice sustainability strategy. I’d like to highlight the leading work that Optus is doing in the areas of cyber wellness and online safety which is a core community focus across the region.

In June 2013, Optus launched a leading digital education program called ‘Digital Thumbprint’. It provides young people in secondary school with information, tools and tips to help them become responsible and proactive cyber citizens. We all want our children to be safe in the digital world and to realise all the benefits of technology. Another innovative program is Kids Helpline @ School, where Optus is using its technology to connect thousands of primary school students with fully trained counsellors. The program has been rolled out across Australia providing support for vulnerable children who are facing issues such as cyberbullying or fears about transitioning to high school.

Optus continues to expand its mentoring programs for vulnerable youth through our involvement in the Australian Business Community Network (ABCN). For example, we launched FOCUS, a program where Optus female executives and leaders mentor female high school students to prepare them for success in the work environment. Supporting youth in the transition to work and employment is a natural extension of our current community support and a key focus across Australia and Singapore.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our team in Australia for their contribution and commitment to saying More Yes to our customers, their colleagues and the broader community. I’m excited about the next phase of our sustainability journey and welcome your feedback on our approach, priorities and outcomes.

Chua Sock KoongSingTel Group Chief Executive Officer

We aim to be a sustainable company, and at the same time, contribute to the economic growth and prosperity of Australia. We’re committed to making positive changes in our industry for our customers, our people, the community and the environment.

Australia ranks highly as one of the most prosperous countries around the world. We all have a role to play in making our country better than it is today and a great place to live and work for generations to come.

For more than 22 years, Optus has been the voice of competition and choice in the Australian telecommunications market. Every day we strive to become Australia’s most loved and most recommended service brand by our customers and our people.

Optus has contributed more than $1 billion to Australia’s economy through investments in our network. Around 9.4 million Australians have benefitted from the increased capacity and coverage of our network as a result of this ongoing investment.

Optus employs more than 9,000 people in its offices and retail stores across the country. We invest heavily in their development and growth as we realise our success depends on it.

Being a sustainable company means building trust with our customers by providing responsible products and services that respond to their needs. Last year we did this by tackling the issue of ‘bill shock’ which gave our customers greater confidence to use their data when and where they want without the fear of an unexpectedly high bill.

In the coming year, we’re looking forward to helping our customers get the most out of their included data by sharing it with up to five different mobile broadband devices. That’s one bill for customers for multiple devices all on the Optus mobile network.

Building trust goes far beyond our commitments to our customers. We’ve got a long history of helping to build stronger communities through our funding, our people as well as through our technology and resources. For example, our work with The Smith Family focuses on helping disadvantaged young people improve their literacy through a mobile phone reading buddy program.

In addition, we’re providing support for Aussie startups through Optus-Innov8 Seed Program which provides funding and resources to entrepreneurs. Clever Buoy is another project we will be launching which uses our technology to provide safety for both beachgoers and sharks. Using sonar detection to detect sharks moving in the ocean, it sends alerts via Optus satellite to life guards. It’s another way we’re saying More Yes to innovation in Australia.

We are committed to building a company that contributes to Australia’s prosperity and has a positive impact in the communities in which we are a part of.

I’m confident we’re doing the right things to deliver More Yes for Australia.

Paul O’SullivanSingTel Optus

A MESSAGE FROM PAUL O’SULLIVAN SINGTEL OPTUS


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ABOUT US

We’re Optus - Australia’s second largest telco, providing communications and digital services to millions of people every day.

We’ve got more than 9,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees and operate 276 Optus ‘yes’ stores right across this amazing country.

We’re the only carrier in Australia to own and operate three types of network infrastructure – mobile, fixed and satellite. Our mobile network connects around 9.4 million customers every day.

We operate more than 5,700 3G base stations covering 98.5% of the Australian population and have switched on 4G to almost 1,800 base stations across our network providing on-street coverage to 75% of the metropolitan population.

Our services include• Mobile• Fixed and IP telephony• Business network services• Fixed and wireless broadband• Satellite services• Entertainment and subscription TV• Wholesale services

Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, we’re a wholly owned subsidiary of Asia’s leading communications provider, the SingTel Group. The SingTel Group and affiliates have 500 million customers worldwide. The SingTel Group, including Optus, is structured into three primary businesses: Group Consumer, Group Enterprise and Group Digital Life.

VISION AND MISSION: A DRIVING AMBITION

Our ambition is to become Australia’s most loved and recommended service brand. We’re doing this with a brand that’s built around brilliant customer experience, simple products and a great network.

Our ambition supports the SingTel Group’s vision to become Asia Pacific’s best multimedia solutions group and we share a set of core values: customer focus, challenger spirit, team work, integrity and personal excellence.

OUR VALUES

CUSTOMER FOCUS

Our success is based upon our customer focus. We listen to, and connect with, customers and treat them with dignity and respect. By understanding and anticipating their needs, we make it easy for our customers to do business with us. We aim to offer them value and quality services to enrich lives and enhance business success.

CHALLENGER SPIRIT

The creativity and innovation of our people set us apart. We look for better ways of doing business and share a passion for making a difference. When faced with challenges and opportunities, we do not say “cannot” but ask “why not?”. We are tenacious and we compete fairly.

TEAMWORK

By working as one team with shared goals, we believe we can achieve great things. We value ideas and contributions from everyone. We recognise, respect and value diversity in the team. We develop strong bonds by communicating and sharing knowledge. We encourage open discussion and commit to an agreed position. All of us have a part to play.

INTEGRITY

Our reputation is based upon our ability to fulfil promises to shareholders, customers and employees. We do so by being honest in our dealings, taking responsibility and being accountable for our actions. We treat everyone the way we would like to be treated. We are proactive in identifying issues and coming up with solutions. We ensure that the highest ethical standards guide us in making decisions.

PERSONAL EXCELLENCE

Leadership and superior performance are achieved through the pursuit of personal excellence. We are committed to doing and being the best. We seek continuous improvement and take pride in what we do. We do things to the highest possible standards. We acknowledge the potential of the individual and create opportunities for all to grow and excel. Together, we celebrate our success and achievements.

BUSINESS STRATEGY: MORE YES

We’re taking the necessary steps to transform our business strategically for sustainable profit growth. Our plan focuses on: delivering simple products; providing our customers with brilliant service; and building a great network.

SIMPLE PRODUCTS

Launch of My Plan – a smart plan for smartphones that offers genuine fairness, flexibility and transparency for our postpaid mobile customers.

BRILLIANT SERVICE

Enhanced store design, improved online tools for customers, employee training initiatives and a new team to solve the most difficult customer problems.

GREAT NETWORK

Ongoing investment in our mobile network with 4G reaching 75% of the metropolitan population and 3G reaching 98.5% of the national population.

In order to achieve our ambition to be the most loved and recommended service brand in Australia, we need to focus on building trust with customers, engaging our people and creating a culture of Yes.

In the year ahead, we’re going to deliver More Yes by:

• Giving customers more ways they can feel in control and comfortable using our great network

• Closing the 4G gap further by switching on more 4G when 700 Megahertz (MHz) and 2600MHz spectrum becomes available

• Living More Yes by engaging employees in our cultural change and providing them with more opportunities to improve customer service

Consolidates the Group’s consumer-related functions, including our international business in the emerging markets which leverages our mobile customer base of more than 500 million for optimised outcomes.

Drives the Group’s efforts to be at the forefront of the digital arena. It strives to bring people together with an innovative and cutting edge mix of digital services such as NextGen TV, e-books, e-magazines, music, digital concierge, cloud-based gaming and hyperlocal content.

Provides innovative and comprehensive Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions to the Group’s enterprise customers across geographical boundaries.

GROUP CONSUMER

THE SINGTEL GROUP

GROUP DIGITAL LIFE GROUP ENTERPRISE


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FINANCIAL RESULTS

We reported a 15% increase in net profit for this financial year despite a 5% decline in revenue, reflecting our strategy of strong cost management and yield improvement. EBITDA margin improved 2.8 percentage points to 29.5%. Our free cash flow for the full year declined 15% to A$903 million as increased cash flow from operations were offset by higher tax payments and mobile investments.

ECONOMIC VALUE

OPTUS 2014 2013

Direct Economic Value Generated A$m A$m

Revenue 8,466 8,934

Economic Value Distributed

Operating costs (excluding staff costs) 4,851 5,446

Staff costs 1,171 1,162

Dividends to shareholders / payments to providers of capital 560 550

Payments to governments / tax expense 361 320

Community investments 10 9

Economic Value Retained 1,513 1,447

GOVERNANCE: OUR ULTIMATE RESPONSIBILITYWe’re committed to high standards of corporate conduct. Over the years, we’ve developed a robust set of well-defined corporate governance processes to enhance corporate performance and accountability.

The listing of the SingTel Group’s shares on the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited (SGX) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) subjects the SingTel Group to two sets of listing rules and the requirement to report against two sets of corporate governance principles and recommendations. More information is available in the SingTel Group’s full Financial Report 2014 which includes a corporate governance report.

SUSTAINABILITY GOVERNANCE

A dedicated Group CSR function manages sustainability throughout the SingTel Group. Led by SingTel’s Group Director of Human Resources who is supported by Vice President of Group CSR, the function oversees the formulation, recommendation, coordination, execution and reporting of the Group’s sustainability strategy. This is done working in collaboration with Group Strategy and Group Risk Management in relation to materiality of the business as well as other key business units such as Procurement. This new function has played an integral role in engaging the SingTel Group Board, SingTel Group Management Committee and the Australian leadership team in sustainability.

During the year, we’ve worked with the SingTel Group to undertake a strategic review of our sustainability strategy, including governance, for both organisations. This review, which also benchmarked our

Group Consumer

GROUP CSRManaging sustainability throughout the SingTel Group

Group Digital Life

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE(Formulating sustainability strategy)

CSR WORKING GROUP

SINGTEL (SINGAPORE)

OPTUS(AUSTRALIA) ASSOCIATES

REGIONAL GROUP CSRA platform for the various working groups to

collaborate and share best practices on CSR programmes

Developing and implementing sustainability strategy and programmes

BUSINESS AND SUPPORT UNITS

WORKS CLOSELY

WITH

approach against best practice, affirmed our commitment to the four focus areas of Marketplace & Customers, Community, People and Environment.

The SingTel Group Management Committee was regularly updated on the progress of this review and the key outcomes were presented to the Board of Directors.

As we undertook this review, strategic oversight of sustainability was provided from the SingTel Group Management Committee, which includes representation from Australia through the Country Chief Officer. Therefore, we did not separately convene the Optus Corporate Responsibility Steering Committee. In addition, our sustainability programs and initiatives were reported monthly as part of the Group CEO’s report to the Board. In the coming year, we will reconvene the Optus Corporate Responsibility Steering Committee to provide guidance on the local execution of the Group’s revised sustainability strategy.

STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT: PEOPLE AT THE CENTRE OF DECISION-MAKINGOur stakeholders are fundamental in guiding our approach to sustainability, managing risk and creating value for our business.

We engage with a wide range of people and organisations on a regular basis including industry and consumer groups, government, employees, community organisations and customers. Our business units engage with stakeholders based on current and emerging trends in our industry. Our approach is to be transparent in our communications and accountable for our actions.

STAKEHOLDER ACTIVITIES

Association for Data Driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA)

ADMA represents the marketing industry and is a source of best practice advice and training for marketing activities across all channels and platforms. It also plays a key role in compliance training and developing advocacy positions that align the policy framework with responsible marketing practices.

Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA)

The AMTA is a forum where key stakeholders discuss policy issues influencing mobile network deployment. It has coordinated and advocated industry’s views on proposed approaches to spectrum allocation, law enforcement and emergency services policy reforms and mobile deployment regulation.

Customers

Every quarter we measure our customers’ likelihood to recommend us through the Market Net Promoter Score (NPS). We also use Touch Point NPS to capture customer feedback from Sales, Care, Billing and stores. This research informs our continuous improvement strategies.

Employees

We seek feedback and engagement from our employees in a variety of ways including employee road-shows, staff newsletters, annual and quarterly surveys, online blogs and emails. Informal taskforces across the business ensure key issues are considered at a practical and operational level.

Internet Industry Association (IIA)*

The IIA represents the interests of Australian internet service providers and contributed to the development of industry engagement on a broad range of public policy issues including: copyright, e-security, classification and national security reforms.

Local communities and charity partners

We engage with local communities through letterbox drops, local newspaper articles, community consultative committees and briefings with local councils. We also work with our strategic community partners to understand issues of concern such as cyberbullying and vulnerable youth.

Shareholders

Optus plays an important role in engaging with the SingTel Group’s shareholders located in Australia and overseas. During the year, management met investors to share Optus’s business strategy, operational and financial performance and prospects. We participated in investor roadshows in the United States and Europe.

Communications Alliance (CA)

The CA aims to provide an effective forum for industry to work together on communications policy and debate. This year CA initiated a range of regulatory reform priorities for the sector, facilitated the development and review of operation codes to support the National Broadband Network (NBN) migration and continued its input to public policy debates on issues such as privacy, copyright and national security reforms.

Figures are rounded to the nearest million

SUSTAINABILITY GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE

*The IIA is in the process of being wound up with its activities being transferred to Communications Alliance


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WHAT’S MATERIAL MATTERSWe focus on dealing with issues and opportunities that matter to our stakeholders and to our business – we call these issues our material sustainability issues. This coming year, we’re undertaking a comprehensive review of our material issues to ensure that our sustainability strategy continues to focus on priorities that are relevant to our business, employees and external stakeholders. This review will inform our transition to the Global Reporting Initiative’s G4 reporting in 2015.

This report is informed by interviews with key internal subject matter experts and the results of our previous materiality review which was conducted in 2012. That review included interviews with senior executives, research into the trends impacting our business and a workshop with our key internal stakeholders. The following priority areas impact our business, customers, suppliers, employees and the broader community.

PRIORITY AREA KEY FOCUS

Customers – Leading in customer experience

Great networkSimple and easy to understand productsBrilliant service Customer support in times of need

Governance – Embedding responsible practices in our business

Strong governanceValues and ethicsStakeholder engagementTransparency and accountabilitySustainable procurement

Employees – Engaging employees in our strategy

DiversityHealth, safety and wellbeingTraining and developmentEmployee engagement

Community – Using our skills and resources to make a positive difference

Strategic partnershipsEducation about responsible use of phones and internetLocal communities

Environment - Minimising our environmental footprint

Energy consumption Sustainable transportElectronic wasteEnvironmental impact of infrastructure

LIVING THE CODE OF CONDUCTWe’re committed to conducting business in an ethical manner and acting with integrity in dealing with all our stakeholders. Integrity is one of our core values and underpins everything we do. The SingTel Group has a strict code of conduct that governs employees’ dealings with customers, suppliers, competitors and the community. We also have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to serious misconduct that may affect our reputation including fraud and corruption.

Our Whistleblower hotline is a safe way for employees to tell us about anything they see or hear that isn’t right. It’s run by an external independent team and is open 24 hours a day.

Each year 100% of local business units are analysed for risk related to corruption. A paper on Fraud Risk Assessment that considers fraud and corruption risks across the group is submitted to the SingTel Group Audit Committee annually.

Online Fraud Awareness Training, which includes reference to corruption, is compulsory for all employees, with a separate module for management employees. Human resource teams follow up on non-completion of compulsory training modules to ensure that the relevant modules are completed.

All incidences or allegations of corruption reported or identified during the year were thoroughly investigated by an independent team of investigators under our Fraud Investigation Policy. The status and outcomes of any investigation are reported to the SingTel Group Audit Committee and Optus Executive Management.

Specific statements outlining tolerance for corrupt practices are set out in the Optus Ethics Policy and the Optus Procurement Ethics Policy.

The SingTel Group, including our organisation, operates a policy of “zero tolerance for fraud”. In line with this, actions taken when allegations of corrupt activity are proven may include both internal disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment and referral to law enforcement bodies where criminal activity has taken place.

The Fraud Investigation Policy also requires the investigation team to identify control gaps that led to the incident and work with the business to develop remedial actions to address these. The completion of remedial actions is also tracked and reported to both Executive Management and the Audit Committee.

RESPONSIBLE SUPPLY CHAINWe’re always looking for suppliers who share our approach to responsible business practices. The ‘Optus Vendor Code of Conduct’ highlights the minimum requirements that must be met by our suppliers. It covers five key areas:

• Corporate governance

• Occupational health and safety

• Environmental management

• Product stewardship

• Supplier management

Our decision-making favourably considers vendors that have adopted these requirements, or can demonstrate that they will work with us, to achieve the minimum standards.

We’ve got a comprehensive tender process that outlines the steps for the procurement of products and services. The five key areas of the ‘Vendor Code of Conduct’ are covered in this process and employees are supported with questionnaires which help to identify potential issues.

All new suppliers are required to self-assess their responses to environmental, labour and human rights criteria outlined in the Optus Vendor Code of Conduct. Based on their responses, the vast majority of vendors meet our requirements, or are actively working to achieve these standards.

We conduct third party audits on key suppliers such as call centres, information technology service providers and field operations. Every month senior representatives visit external call centre sites located in the Philippines and India. In addition, senior directors visit these sites at least every quarter to ensure that the suppliers adhere to our policies and procedures including Occupational Health and Safety standards.

Each year

of local business units are analysed for risk related to corruption. 100%


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OUR SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY

OBJECTIVES & PILLARS OF THE SINGTEL GROUP’S CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY

We aim to deeply embed Sustainability in our DNA, Culture, Value System and the way we run our business and engage our stakeholders

During the past year, we’ve continued to review and enhance our approach to sustainability as part of our work with the SingTel Group. Our focus is on the areas where we have an opportunity to take a leadership role and where our skills, resources and expertise can make a positive difference to our stakeholders. It’s key to earning the trust that’s required to support our ambition.

Our aim is to deeply embed sustainability in our culture, values, decision-making, products and services. We want to create a sustainable business that is positioned for long-term growth by leading and shaping positive change in four key areas: Marketplace & Customers, Community, People and Environment.

We see an opportunity to build on our previous work and drive greater value from our sustainability strategy for all of our stakeholders – our business, customers, people, communities and the environment. In particular, we’re working to embed sustainability into leadership groups to ensure that key executive members own and advocate key sustainability initiatives.

We’re finalising a set of sustainability metrics which will be used to measure, monitor and manage sustainability across the group and at a local level. More effective measurement of sustainability will allow us to fully understand the tangible and intangible value to our business.

To create sustainable and long-term growth for our business,

while leading and shaping the positive change for our marketplace & customers, the communities

we operate in, our people and the environment

• Delivering superior customer experience and transforming the way our customers live and work with our innovative ICT products and services

• Adhering to the highest standards of corporate governance

• Embracing responsible business practice

• Driving positive and sustainable changes to disadvantaged communities, especially vulnerable youth

• Enabling the inclusion and well-being of young people and the broader community

• Engaging our people to support the community through corporate workplace giving, and volunteer programs

• To be an employer our people are proud to work for by providing care and equal opportunities in a workplace and culture that is diverse, inclusive and collaborative

• Challenging and developing our people to reach their fullest potential

• Understanding managing and minimising our environmental impact through energy efficient practices and technologies, resource conservation and pollution prevention • Focusing on 4 key aspects, energy and water use, carbon emmissions and waste management

MARKETPLACE& CUSTOMERS

COMMUNITY PEOPLE ENVIRONMENT

OUR APPROACH Our ambition is to become the most loved and recommended service brand in Australia. That’s why we’re committed to providing our customers with simple products, brilliant service and a great network.

We’re making significant changes to put customers at the heart of everything we do. But we can’t do this alone. We need the support of partners and suppliers who share our values and approach to responsible business practices.

PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS

• A Declaration of Yes helped us make our way back to the founding principles of our business.

• My Plan is helping reduce bill shock, making a real difference almost 800,000 customers.

• Our market Net Promoter Score (NPS) has increased to +5, meaning we’ve got more customers who’d recommend us to their family and friends than not.

• We recorded a 14-year low in the number of complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO).


15HIGHLIGHTS 14

NET PROMOTER SCORE HAS INCREASED TO

+5

WHICH IS HELPING TO REDUCE BILL SHOCK

LAUNCHED MY PLAN

14-YEAR LOW IN COMPLAINTS

LAUNCHED OUR DIGITAL EDUCATION PROGRAM –

DIGITAL THUMBPRINT

AUSTRALIA’S FIRST INTEGRATED EMPLOYEE

VOLUNTEERING AND GIVING PLATFORM

LAUNCHED YES4GOOD

DELIVERED TRAINED COUNSELLORS VIA SKYPE REACHING 4,866 STUDENTS THROUGH THE KIDS HELPLINE @ SCHOOL PROGRAM

THE NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS USING OUR HARDSHIP SERVICE DECREASED BY 26% IN THE PAST YEAR

26%

1800

9 POINTSEMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT SCORE IS UP NINE POINTS

EMPLOYEES HAVE PARTICIPATED IN LOV (LISTEN, OWN, VALUE)

TRAINING

TRIPLEDTHE NUMBER OF VISITS TO THE

MY WELLBEING SITE FOR EMPLOYEES CONDUCTED A PILOT OF A NEW OFFICE

LIGHTING SOLUTION AT MACQUARIE PARK

RECOGNISED WITH AN

FOR BEING A CYCLING FRIENDLY BUSINESS

AWARD

REDUCED OUR WATER USAGE BY 9% AT MACQUARIE PARK

WATERUSAGE

YEAR-ON-YEAR REDUCTIONS IN FUEL USAGE FOR THE PAST SIX YEARS

TO THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY OMBUDSMAN

REACHING MORE THAN 25,000 STUDENTS

EXPANDED MOBILESTUDENT2STUDENTNATIONALLY

WITH 93% OF STUDENTS IMPROVING THEIR READING

INVESTED IN THE COMMUNITY

$9.7M


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MAKING OUR WAY BACK TO YES Our success today is the result of a promise we made over 20 years ago. A promise wrapped up in one word: Yes.

This year we’ve been busy getting back to the founding principles of our business by creating new ways to deliver on the promise of Yes. And we’ve spent a lot of time listening to our customers.

Our ambition is to become Australia’s most loved and recommended service brand. We know that’s a bold statement and our words must be matched by our actions.

We’re completely transforming who we are and what we do from the inside out. Our first step was to restart the conversation internally. We spent four months talking to our people and building their support for our strategy. You can read more about this journey in the People section.

Once we were confident that our people were ready, we launched our intentions to our customers through ‘A Declaration of Yes’. Yes to constantly improving our network, Yes to creating new mobile plans that work with how customers actually use their phones and Yes to doing everything possible to make them feel good.

The Declaration was promoted in a major advertising campaign across the country. It was a powerful message that reconnected Optus with our customers and the founding principles that disrupted the telco sector in Australia more 20 years ago.

To deliver on our promise we decided to tackle the biggest single customer issue in our sector – bill shock. In 2012, complaints to the TIO from Optus customers hit a high primarily due to issues with bill shock.

THE BASICS ABOUT BILL SHOCKWith more people using smartphones, customers have an increased appetite for data. And when data usage goes up, it exposes people to unexpectedly high bills or ‘bill shock’.

In fact, our research showed that 27% of customers had no idea what their data allowance was and 36% were concerned that their mobile data usage will exceed their allowance. In addition, around 32% of 1,200 parents surveyed in September 2013 had been hit by bill shock from their kid’s mobile bill. A third of these parents received a bill of $300 or more.

We know that most people aren’t aware of the scale of excess charges that occur when they go over their data allowance. A customer that goes over their limit may be hit by charges that could be 10 or 20 times what they’d normally pay.

YES, WE’VE MADE A FEW CHANGES...



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OUR CUSTOMER CARE TEAM IS DELIVERING ON OUR PROMISE FOR BRILLIANT SERVICE.

Kayla, Customer Care Team: Now the only other concern is I can see here is that you’ve received some high bills in the past, are you aware as to why that is?

Amanda, Optus Customer: I think it’s my data usage, I haven’t been on a plan in a while so I’m still trying to find my way around, do you know what I mean? So I’ve been on prepaid for the last 10 years. But I’m trying to get on top of things. I think it is my data usage and you know, the music and all that sort of stuff, so I know exactly what I’m doing, so I’ll try to avoid that in the future, definitely.

Kayla: Yeah, because at this stage with the plan that you’re on, if you are going over your data you are charged 25 cents per megabyte, so just to give you an idea if you actually use an additional one gigabyte, it’s $256 in additional charges. Whereas we do have new plans that have just recently come out in July actually, where if you do go over your data inclusion we will automatically top you up for that additional one gigabyte and it’s only going to cost you $10 rather than those excess fees of $256.

Amanda: Ooh! Ok! How do I change my plan?

Kayla: Yep, we can certainly change you onto that. I mean, whilst you’re still monitoring your usage and obviously trying not to go over it at least then you’ve still got that safeguard if you do go over, you’re not going to get those high additional charges.

Amanda: Oh that’s fantastic. *Customer’s name has been changed to protect their privacy.

AMANDA SAYS ‘BYE BYE’ TO BILL SHOCK

We’ve worked with carriers in

182 countries to cut global roaming charges for people wanting to use their own phones and existing number.

NO MORE SURPRISESThis year we launched a product that turns bill shock on its head. My Plan was released in July 2013. It’s a smart plan for smartphones that offers genuine fairness, flexibility and transparency with almost 800,000 postpaid customers.

There are four key features of My Plan:

1. Flexibility - Customers are protected when they go over their monthly plan limit by automatically moving them up to the next usage level for that month. So instead of paying around $250 for an extra gig of data, customers are only charged $10 which according to our research was perceived as a “fair and reasonable” amount.

2. Simple communications - We’ve removed confusing technical jargon like dollar value, flagfall, caps and so on. Simple terms like minutes, megabytes and unlimited text make life easier for our customers.

3. Usage alerts – We know it’s sometimes hard for customers to keep track of how much data they’re downloading or minutes they’re chatting. That’s why we keep them in the know with usage alerts. We’ve also improved the usage meter in My Account and My Optus App so that no bill should ever come as a surprise again.

4. Unlimited texting – And because we’re keeping it simple, we’ve made standard national SMS and MMS unlimited for all My Plan customers.

In addition, while most of our customers like to sign up for a 24-month contract with a phone included, there’s a growing number who prefer to go month-to-month. The Optus My SIM Plan allows customers to use their own phone and choose between monthly or 12-month plans.

In the long run My Plan will encourage our customers to confidently use their data when and where they want. These are bold and market leading moves for our industry.

DATA ROAMING CHARGES DROPWe’re also taking steps to address the issues that exist with international roaming. We’ve worked with carriers in 182 countries to cut global roaming charges.

We’ve reduced the five geographical pricing zones to just two, each with simple flat rates. Data roaming charges have dropped $20 per megabyte for postpaid customers to 50c per megabyte for Oceania, Asia, Europe and North America, and to $1 per megabyte for the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.

Our new Optus $10 Travel Packs allow unlimited calls and texts and 30 megabyte of data to give customers piece of mind that their phone bill isn’t going to cost more than their holiday.

We expect around 300,000 customers will benefit from our simpler and fairer global roaming charges.

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MORE GREENFIELDS A greenfield is a new mobile site where we haven’t had one before. It could be a new site that we build or a shared site through our joint venture agreement. It allows us to bring enhanced coverage and capacity to an area. This ultimately means we can provide a better mobile experience for our customers.

Along with our 4G ramp up, next year is about adding greenfield sites to our mobile network.

Building new sites is great news for our customers. It means that they will have an even better network experience including reduced call drop-outs, better call quality and better mobile data experience. And in some areas it means customers will be able to receive dedicated Optus coverage for the very first time. The Industry Code for Mobile Phone Base Station Deployment guides our approach to building new sites. We’ve got a strong focus on the transparency and visibility of consultation with the community. During the past year we ran a series of briefings with local councils to inform them about our approach to new and shared sites in their area.

A SAFE NETWORKWe’ve been paying close attention to the risks associated with electromagnetic energy (EME). A number of health concerns have been raised globally on potential exposure to EME through using mobiles or being exposed to mobile network infrastructure such as base stations.

While there is no substantiated evidence of public health risks from exposure to the levels of EME typically emitted from mobile phones, perceived health risks can be a concern for our customers, the community and regulators.

Over the next year, we’ll be increasing the number of greenfield sites in our network and adding technologies to existing sites. As a result of this and other carrier activity, EME levels may increase but will remain compliant with Australian Standards. All of our sites have EME reports available to the public at www.rfnsa.com.au. We undertake predictive EME modelling and testing to ensure compliance at our sites.

A NEW IDENTITY FOR OUR NEW VISION At the same time, we relaunched our brand in Australia. Our brand isn’t just a logo or a funky design. It’s all of us, how we treat our customers and each other. It’s our values, our behaviours and the attitude of More Yes we bring to work every day.

A new brand and supporting identity was developed, coinciding with the introduction of a series of improvements and innovations to our products, services, network and billing.

The supporting new brand identity was designed to inspire positivity and a greater emotional connection with our customers.

A BETTER NETWORK This year we invested millions in our mobile network and in 2014-15 we plan to undertake an unprecedented infrastructure investment.Our investment will focus on the continued upgrade of our national network to 4G that will allow customers to experience superfast speeds in the capital cities and some regional areas.

Around 9.4 million customers are benefitting from our five year nation-wide 3G network upgrade program. We’ve upgraded more than 4,400 mobile sites nationally to provide significantly better coverage indoors, enhanced call quality and a more consistent experience for our 3G customers.

At the end of March, we hit 75% 4G metro population coverage. Our 4G 1800 MHz network uses a technology called FD-LTE and is available in most capital cities and many major metropolitan centres. Sites delivered this year include Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Byron Bay, Toowoomba, Coffs Harbour, Wollongong, the Central Coast and the Newcastle/Hunter regions.

We’re in a unique position within some metropolitan markets by having access to significant amounts of spectrum to operate a 4G network. These complementary networks will provide the necessary capacity required for the growing demand in 4G data services. It means more customers can connect to the 4G network at the same time. Our new 4G Plus network operates on the 2300 MHz spectrum band with a technology called TD-LTE. It’s available in parts of Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Newcastle, Central Coast, Brisbane and Adelaide.

MORE SPECTRUMWe’ve added the 900MHz spectrum our metropolitan 3G network which creates more capacity and coverage, raising our metro 3G indoors coverage from 70% to 94% over the past two years.

Our bid for 4G spectrum licences as part of the Federal Government’s auction of 700MHz and 2.5 Gigahertz (GHz) spectrum bands was successful. We purchased the new spectrum for $649 million, reflecting the reserve price for both spectrum bands. We bought two lots of 10MHz on the low frequency 700MHz spectrum giving us ability to expand 4G around the country, with stronger 4G coverage in metro and regional areas.

We also bought two lots of 20MHz of the 2600MHz spectrum which will provide an unparalleled network capacity for 4G data services in metro areas when combined with the 2300MHz spectrum we picked up when we acquired Vividwireless in 2012.

The amount of spectrum secured reflects our strategy of meeting growing customer needs for connectivity and optimising the level of infrastructure through a balance of new sites, upgrades and infrastructure sharing.

CROWDSOURCING OUR NETWORK PERFORMANCEWe’re always looking for ways to improve and we know that network quality is one of the top reasons why customers choose their telco. Understanding the actual network experience and making improvements based on this is absolutely critical for us.

A new initiative which is using crowdsourcing to build the best mobile network in Australia is gathering momentum. More than 450,000 customers have installed the OptusNow app including 180,000 in the past year. The app collects important information to understand customers’ actual network experiences which helps us to identify:

• Areas to upgrade

• Location of blackspots

• Mobile phone faults

• Call dropout locations

• Strength of coverage inside buildings

Telcos transmit mobile signals on different frequencies of spectrum described in megahertz (MHz). The more customers there are using a particular frequency, the more congested the network gets which means our customers won’t have a great experience. More spectrum means more capacity for customers.

WHAT IS SPECTRUM?

OUR CUSTOMERS MAKE AN AVERAGE OF OVER 240 MILLION CALLS, SEND OVER 230 MILLION

TEXT MESSAGES AND USE ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF DATA RIGHT ACROSS OUR NETWORK

EVERY WEEK.



22

INNOVATION THROUGH INFRASTRUCTURE SHARING In 2012, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Vodafone to expand our current network joint venture agreement. As a result, customers will have wider coverage through access to nearly 1,000 additional mobile sites and stronger 3G and 4G services across Australia. The MOU provides an approximate 20% increase in the overall number of mobile sites on the Optus mobile network by 2015, delivering better network consistency, faster data speeds and enhanced coverage for customers. One of the key benefits of the MOU is site sharing - the ability to co-locate the majority of new infrastructure on existing sites which minimises the visual impact of large infrastructure and reduces the need for new sites.

INVESTMENT IN THE NBNThe National Broadband Network (NBN) represents a great opportunity to extend our broadband footprint and bring our market leading No Gotchas Bundles to more Australians than ever before. Importantly it will provide the opportunity for more than three million postpaid mobile customers to bundle their fixed services with Optus for the first time. Over the past 12 months we have made significant investment into NBN including:

• connecting our network to the NBN – so wherever there is NBN fibre, we can service it

• developing ordering, provisioning and service management IT platforms

• enabling our sales channels including Telesales, Retail and Online

• communicating to our customers when they can move to NBN

• preparing our customers for copper disconnection

In 2014-15 this investment will not only continue but accelerate to extend our footprint even further and to improve the customer onboarding experience.

YES, THERE’S A DIFFERENCE We make every reasonable endeavour to ensure that our advertising and promotional materials comply with Australian regulations.Our employees undertake online compliance training annually. Employees that deal directly with our competitors have additional training on anti-competitive conduct.

Optus is a founding member of the Communications Alliance, a self-regulatory industry body that provides a forum for developing initiatives that foster the operation of competitive networks and protect the interests of consumers.

In January and February 2014, we ran a television commercial that featured a map of Australia and compared the network coverage of Optus and Telstra. Telstra objected to this commercial, claiming that some people may have misinterpreted the representation in the commercial as relating to geographic coverage and not population coverage. The Supreme Court agreed with Telstra’s arguments.

Put simply, we measure network coverage in places where people live and work. That means we cover 98.5% of the Australian population, which is less than 1% difference when compared to Telstra, and no one is disputing this.

However, Justice James Elliot made orders requiring Optus to, among other things, clarify for customers representations regarding our network coverage. We have since implemented a number of clarification measures to ensure that customers are aware that the comparison made in the commercial did not seek to compare, nor did it accurately reflect the geographic network coverage of either Telstra or Optus.

Further, we have sent letters to all post-paid customers who signed up to Optus, in the period from 26 January to 16 May 2014. We’ve offered those customers the option of exiting their contract with Optus with no cancellation fee if they feel their decision to sign a contract with Optus was based on the representation of Optus’ network coverage in the commercial.

COMMUNITY IMPACT

• Reduction of environmental impact due to co-location• Consolidation of infrastructure to minimise visual impact• Decreased number of greenfield sites required due to larger combined site pool

CUSTOMER BENEFITS

• Improved networks to meet customer demand • Enhanced coverage • Accelerated delivery of services• Improved competition in the Australian telco market

CARRIER

• More efficient deployment• Shared costs • Improved community relations

SITESHARING

KEY BENEFITS OF SITE SHARING

WE MADE A MISTAKE, SO WE GOT IT SORTED Between July 2011 and September 2013, we incorrectly billed around 235,000 post-paid mobile customers and small business customers for the SurePage service. The billing error was the result of a software coding issue which has since been fixed. We’ve contacted all affected customers to apologise and to provide a full refund with interest. The total cost of the billing error was $8.8 million, with over 175,000 customers receiving an average refund of $50 or less.

We informed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and the TIO of the issue before taking steps to notify and compensate customers. We received a formal warning from ACMA regarding our handling of the issue.



24

WHAT IS NPS? The Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer advocacy and asks the question “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you recommend Optus to your family and friends?”.Customers are grouped into:

• Promoters – most likely to recommend

• Passives – neutral about if they’d recommend

• Detractors – more likely to talk negatively

NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of customers who are detractors from the percentage who are promoters. The scores range from -100 to +100. It’s a transparent, simple method of generating honest customer feedback.

We currently measure NPS at three levels: Market – quarterly survey with the general public; Touchpoint – ongoing feedback about our interactions be it online, through the call centre or in-store; and People – quarterly survey with our employees.

WHY NPS?There are three key reasons why we use NPS at Optus:

1. NPS is a simple measure and aligns with our goal to deliver a brilliant customer experience.

2. It is holistic. When a customer answers the NPS question they draw on their experience with Optus and also their view of and trust in our brand overall.

3. It is a strong predictor of customer behaviour and their likelihood to purchase from Optus.

NPS changes the way we do business and we take action to address the results through contacting low-scoring customers; rewarding and coaching our people who deal with customers; analysing and fixing root causes; and guiding strategic planning.

SO, WHAT’S YOUR SCORE?We’re pleased to say that Optus’ score has increased year-on-year. Our Market NPS sits at +5, meaning we’ve more customers who’d recommend us to their family and friends than not. FROM DETRACTORS TO ADVOCATESWhile we’re seeing some positive results, we still care about those customers who feel completely let down by us. Sometimes these customers have unresolved issues and an NPS score of -100. It’s the worst score you can get.

This is where our Promoter Response Team steps in. These employees need to deal with the unhappiest customers, day in and day out. However, the results have been amazing. The team’s role is to contact customers with an NPS of -100 and turn them into advocates.

COMPLAINTS ARE DOWN It makes sense to say that if our NPS is increasing and we’re working hard to improve customers’ experiences, then it should flow on to other key metrics within our organisation.

As a last resort when a customer is really frustrated and feels they can’t get a resolution, they can go to the TIO. We closely monitor the number of complaints our customers make to the TIO.

We’ve seen a consistent decrease in the number of new complaints reported over the past 12 months. The latest TIO report shows that complaints about mobile coverage have dropped to a three-year low across the industry. Out of all the telcos, we reported the biggest improvement with 56% fewer complaints in the October-December quarter than the same time the previous year. Meanwhile our two key competitors had a relatively stable number of complaints.

HONEST CUSTOMER FEEDBACK



26

LOTS IN STORE FOR RETAIL Our customers said they wanted easier, simpler and better service from us. We listened and began our retail transformation journey to deliver brilliant service consistently at every single Optus store. We’ve been training our retail teams to help them anticipate and respond to customer needs more effectively. You can read more about this in the People section.

We’ve made numerous improvements to our retail stores including:

• In-store teams have been trained to solve a customer’s issue on the spot – getting rid of the need to escalate to Customer Care.

• ‘Gurus’ are in-store – specialists who can help with everything from technical queries to choosing the right phone.

• Concierge welcomes customers and our unique app lets a customer know when their consultant is available – reducing waiting times.

Our efforts were recognised by the inaugural Frost & Sullivan Award for Best Customer Experience in Telecommunications (In-Store). These awards measure customer satisfaction at Australia’s top three telcos’ retail stores, looking at factors like the ability of staff to answer customer needs, store design and location, waiting times, quality and quantity of demo phones and personalised service.

SOME STORES HAVE COME HOMEOur retail strategy is focused on delivering a brilliant and consistent customer experience. One outcome of our strategy was the identification of potential benefits to the business ifwe directly manage more of the ‘yes’ Optus stores. As a result, we made offers to franchisees of selected stores to mutually terminate their franchise agreement and transition their stores to Optus management.

Between June 2013 and May 2014, we transitioned 142 stores – which brings the total number of company-owned stores to 160. The company owned structure allows us to be more cost effective, to have greater control over retaining customers and to deliver a brilliant and consistent customer experience.

WE’RE HERE TO HELPThis year 7,638 people made use of our hardship service – 26% less than the previous year. The reduction in referrals can largely be attributed to the launch of My Plan which has significantly reduced the number of customers experiencing an unusually high spend.

We’ve also seen an increase in customers impacted by a loss of job or reduced income which largely reflects the current economic climate in Australia.

The FAST team support customers experiencing hardship resulting from natural disasters but fortunately only 13 customers needed our assistance this year.

REASONS FOR HARDSHIP REFERRAL 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010

Unusually high spend 41% 46% 75% 60% 62%

Loss of employment 37% 20% 8% 11% 7%

Disaster relief 0% 2% 0% 8% 0%

Other 22% 32% 17% 21% 31%

Volume of cases on hand 1,826 1,872 2,680 2,110 1,329

Numbers have been rounded to the nearest percent.

ACTION ON DISABILITYOur Disability Action Plan was established in 1999 and updated in 2012. This year we invited volunteers from a number of Australia’s disability consumer groups to take part in a trial designed to make our customers’ experience better – especially when it comes to using our Interactive Voice Response system (or IVR for short). We wanted to test whether allowing more time to enter a phone number into the system would assist customers to be more successful in reaching our Customer Care teams. This trial was a great success.

As a result of these tests and the participation from our volunteers, we’ll be updating our IVR systems over the coming months to double the response time. This will help all of our customers reach our care team whenever they need us.

PRIVACY, IT’S A PRIORITYFrom 12 March 2014, a new set of Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) regarding the handling of personal information came into effect. The APPs relate to how businesses handle, use, and store personal information and engage in direct marketing. We have undertaken a thorough compliance checking program to ensure that our approach, policies and processes address the new privacy laws.

In addition we’re a member of ADMA and we adhere to the ADMA Direct Marketing Code, which governs all direct-marketing and data-driven activities. We also abide by the ‘Do Not Call Register’ and spam laws, which enhance privacy protections and aim to protect consumers from unsolicited marketing calls and electronic messages.

All our employees are regularly trained and informed about our Privacy Policy and their responsibilities in helping to keep our customers’ data secure. Optus’ Privacy Policy is available on our website www.optus.com.au/privacy.

At Optus Business, we continue to invest in thought leadership. Our approach is to engage the business community in three different and complementary ways:

• Research – Optus Future of Business Report

• Business Leadership Conferences - Optus Vision

• Interactive Learning Environments - Optus ThinkSpace

In 2013, we continued to invest in independent research with a goal to provide insight and knowledge on how organisations and their customers engage in a multi-channel world. The breadth of the research was significant, with 550 companies and over 2,000 consumers engaged. The Future of Business report findings have been made available to the broader business community on our website and provide insight to inform channel strategy.

We’ve used this research to engage in a deeper customer conversation on business strategy and key trends. Our annual Vision conference, held in multiple locations in Australia, brings together business leaders across a range of industries and local market environments, opening up a forum for idea exchange, while allowing us to better understand the future needs of the business community. In addition, the launch of our interactive learning environment on our Sydney campus provides access to market trends, facts and the latest research in an immersive interactive setting. Leveraging the business insights from our research, our new ThinkSpace environment at our Sydney campus provides access to market trends, facts and the latest research in an immersive interactive setting. Customers are able to access relevant information, while at the same time chat with our subject matter experts, who able to discuss a specific business opportunity in detail.

MORE FEEDBACK FROM BUSINESS, MORE OFTENWe aim to delight our business customers at every stage of their partnership with us. To do this we need to understand what our business customers are experiencing and identify ways we can improve. We believe the most honest feedback about the services we provide comes directly from our customers, so we’ve put in place programs to facilitate an ongoing dialogue with them.

To understand how business customers feel as a result of interacting with us, we invite strategic decision makers and operational contacts to participate in face-to-face or telephone interviews annually. We use this feedback to inform account plans, continual improvement and business strategy.

In addition to this annual relationship feedback, we’ve implemented a program to ask customers for feedback after an interaction with our service teams. This ensures we understand any issues and resolve them quickly and it informs our

continual improvement processes. In the past year, we’ve surveyed more than 1,200 customers, that’s 17% more than the previous year – delivering on our goal of more feedback from more customers, more often.

Our customer research informs our customer experience strategy and improvement activities. A comprehensive program of improvement initiatives is underway focused on improving key customer touch points and their underlying processes. Since the inception of the Voice of Customer program we have seen year-on-year improvements in Account Management, Problem Resolution, Mobile Coverage, Connect and Billing. This year saw Optus Business achieve its highest customer satisfaction in seven years – an overall satisfaction score of 7.2.

LET’S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS

OUR NEW THINKSPACE ENVIRONMENT AT OUR SYDNEY

CAMPUS PROVIDES ACCESS TO MARKET TRENDS, FACTS AND

THE LATEST RESEARCH IN AN IMMERSIVE INTERACTIVE SETTING. CUSTOMERS ARE ABLE TO ACCESS

RELEVANT INFORMATION, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME CHAT WITH OUR

SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS


29

We’re proud of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs and partnerships that we’ve invested in over the past 10 years. Our journey and achievements include:

• 2003: We helped establish Australia’s first online counselling service with Kids Helpline and that partnership continues to innovate today.

• 2005: We were a founding member of the Australian Business and Community Network (ABCN) – a partnership of national business leaders and companies working on mentoring programs with high needs schools.

• 2007: We launched Optus community grants which supports local communities in helping young people reach their full potential in life. Since then we contributed more than $1.2 million to over 200 community organisations across Australia.

• 2009: We joined the London Benchmarking Group and commenced measuring our community investment and impact.

• 2010: Together with The Smith Family, we launched mobile student2student aimed at helping disadvantaged youth in regional and metro areas improve their reading levels through the use of a mobile phone.

• 2013: We launched Digital Thumbprint – a digital education program aimed at helping youth to become cyber savvy.

• 2013: We launched Optus Rockcorps which uses the power of music to inspire youth to volunteer in their communities.

MORE YES THROUGH OUR COMMUNITY FRAMEWORK

We’re living More Yes through our commitment to the community.

Our community framework aligns with our brand, business strategy and the SingTel Group sustainability strategy. The aims of our community framework are to:

• Become Australia’s most loved and recommended service brand;

• Win the hearts and minds of our people by engaging them in our community; and

• Make a significant and measurable difference in our community.

We’ve worked with our community partners to define our CSR mission, informed by our previous work in this area and emerging trends that are impacting the community.

We use our resources wisely with clear governance and guidelines about what we support and what we don’t. We’ve updated our Charitable Contributions Policy to help guide our people and explain our approach to activities such as national partnerships, local grants, cash donations and in-kind support.APPROACH

Building trust is core to our ambition to be the most loved and recommended service brand in Australia. One of the ways we do this is by saying Yes to supporting and investing in the community.

Our mission is to help vulnerable youth achieve their full potential and enjoy a bright future through the use of technology and investment in life enhancing programs. Our support is focused on three key areas: cyber wellness and online safety, education and employability, inclusion and wellbeing.

We’re investing in partnerships that not only help community organisations build their capacity and impact, but also empower our people to support causes that they’re passionate about.


• The launch a digital education program – Digital Thumbprint – which has already reached almost 36,000 secondary aged students.

• The launch and establishment of yes4Good – an integrated giving platform providing a one-stop-shop where our people can donate time or money to over 250 charities currently listed.

• The expansion of the mobile student2student program reaching 525 reading pairs with 93% improving their reading skills.

• Continued to expand our partnership with Kids Helpline reaching 4,866 students through the Kids Helpline @ School program.

COMMUNITYA STRONG HISTORY OF SUPPORTING THE COMMUNITY

COMMUNITY

OPTUS COMMUNITY FRAMEWORK

VISION:

KEY AREAS OF FOCUS:

OPTUS PROGRAMS:

Key CSR Focus: Vulnerable Youth

To be Australia’s most loved and recommendedservice brand by our people and our customers

• Bringing Education through technology to disadvantaged and vulnerable youth

• Helping young people with future career options and transitions to employment

• Cyber-safety solutions for youth

• Empowering young people to be responsible and savvy digital citizens

• Developing a motivated and highly engaged workforce

• Enabling our people to contribute to causes they are passionate about

• Indigenous Employment Opportunities • Accessibility for remote and disadvantaged groups

• Mental wellbeing and Health

EDUCATION ANDEMPLOYMENT

DIGITALCITIZENSHIP

ENGAGING OUR PEOPLE

INCLUSION ANDWELLBEING

• Mobile student2student

• Community Grants

• ABCN

• Digital Thumbprint

• Kids Helpline@ school

• yes4Good

• ABCN mentoring

• Skilled volunteering

• Disaster response

• Rockcorps

• Indigenous education/skills training • Community Grants

• Tour de Cure

• Nelune Foundation

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30 COMMUNITY

As a large telco, we’re excited about the opportunities of a connected and digital world. However we also understand the need for young people to be educated about how to behave responsibly online and where to go for support and information. We’re committed to focusing on cyber wellness and online safety and as a key part of our community framework.

WHAT IS CYBERBULLYING?Bullying is one of the major issues facing young people today and the topic of ‘cyberbullying’ is one of the most viewed areas on the Kids Helpline website.

There are three core elements to bullying: a deliberate intention to cause harm; an imbalance of power between the people involved; and often repeated behaviour by the person/s doing the bullying.

Cyberbullying, just like regular bullying, is done on purpose to hurt or embarrass someone. It uses technology such as mobile phones, emails, websites, blogs and social media and can be shared widely and quickly with a lot of people.1

There are many negative impacts of bullying including things like sadness, anxiety, low self-esteem, fear, anger and disengagement from school. In some cases, bullying can contribute to self-harm or thoughts of suicide.2 Technology changes the nature of bullying because it can be anonymous and reaches a wider audience.

People often can’t get away from it because the messages come through on their mobile phone, to their email account or to their social networking site like Facebook.

In many cases, young people will not tell an adult about bullying because they fear it could worsen the problem. For cyberbullying in particular, young people are concerned that telling an adult would result in their access to mobile phones or technology being restricted or removed.

THE ‘LINGO’ OF THE DIGITAL WORLDKids may not use the word ‘cyberbullying’ but they might use terms like sexting, flaming, happy slapping or trolling.

Sexting: is sending nude or semi-nude photos by mobile phone or posting sexual images on social networking sites like Facebook.

Flaming: is when somebody sends hurtful messages over the internet, email or phone.

Trolling: is a person who anonymously posts on the internet to hurt someone or make them angry.

Happy slapping: is a video recording of someone who has been physically assaulted and sharing it online or through text messages.

IT’S A WHOLE NEW DIGITAL WORLD

1 www.kidshelpline.com.au2 www.kidshelpline.com.au


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SAVVY CYBER CITIZENS We’re building a digital education program called ‘Digital Thumbprint’. This innovative program provides young people with information, tools and tips to help them become digital savvy, responsible and proactive cyber citizens. It’s one way we’re helping to protect and empower young people to have positive experiences in the digital world.

Digital Thumbprint makes digital education fun and interactive. It teaches secondary school students the advantages of a positive online presence whilst arming them with the facts they need to stay safe online. The program is aligned with the relevant school curriculum in each state and covers topics such security, cyberbullying and study resources.

“THESE SESSIONS WERE ENGAGING, RELEVANT AND INFORMATIVE. THE CASE STUDIES

CHALLENGED OUR STUDENTS TO THINK ABOUT THE IMPACT THEY HAVE IN THE DIGITAL WORLD, WHILE THE FACILITATOR’S PRESENTATION STYLE

ENCOURAGED STUDENTS TO PARTICIPATE, ASK QUESTIONS AND REALLY TAKE HEED OF WHAT WAS BEING SAID.”

- Teacher

We’re seeking to achieve genuine social impact through positive behavioural change in students’ online experiences. We have run more than 1,200 sessions reaching more than 35,800 students across metro New South Wales and metro Victoria since the program was launched in 2013. This year the program reached more than 25,000 students.

We’ve applied our NPS modelling to the Digital Thumbprint program by asking teachers ‘On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend Digital Thumbprint to other schools and teachers’. The program has a positive score of +59 which is a very strong result for a program that has being going for less than 12 months. We will continue to monitor this key metric.

FEEDBACK FROM DIGITAL THUMBPRINT STUDENTS

STRONGLY AGREE AGREE DISAGREE STRONGLY

DISAGREE

The workshop was engaging 50% 48% 1% 1%

The facilitator was engaging 62% 36% 1% 1%

The workshop was relevant to me 41% 48% 9% 2%

I learnt something in the workshop that I can use 57% 38% 4% 1%

I enjoyed the workshop 53% 44% 2% 1%

More information: www.digitalthumbprint.com.au

TECHNOLOGY LINKS CHILDREN WITH SUPPORT

We understand that if our products and services aren’t used in a responsible manner, there can be serious impacts for our customers and the broader community. We’re supporting organisations like Kids Helpline that help children who are experiencing issues such as cyberbullying.

Kids Helpline @ School is an Australian first program which provides free interactive online sessions to thousands of primary school students across Australia.

The program provides support for children facing issues such as friendship and relationship problems, cyberbullying, family issues and fears about transitioning into high school. It’s delivered by qualified Kids Helpline counsellors who join classrooms across the country via video linkup. One of the aims is to normalise help seeking behaviour and assist children to feel comfortable about seeking support.

This year we extended our partnership with Kids Helpline to roll out the program across the country. More than 167 sessions have been conducted, reaching around 4,866 students. The top four topics chosen by schools are Transition to High School, Bullying, Friendship and Cyberbullying.

Optus has partnered with Kids Helpline since 1999. We provide funding and resources to support the Kids Helpline @ School program as well as zero-rate calls to their 1800 telephone counselling service. In 2012, there were 700,000 telephone and online interactions with Australian youth.

More information: www.kidshelpline.com.au

COMMUNITY

STUDENTS HELPING STUDENTS

There are more than 638,000 children3 living in disadvantage across Australia who are unable to access the same educational, health or life opportunities that others enjoy. We’ve got a role to play in providing technology, devices and connectivity that can have a significant impact on breaking this cycle of poverty.

Building literacy skills in the early years of schooling is essential to a child’s ability to do well at school. Research identifies a clear link between the development of skills such as literacy and numeracy at an early age and higher levels of education achievements, greater employability, higher earnings and greater social participation.4

A higher proportion of children living in disadvantage in Australia are not achieving minimum standards in reading, writing, spelling and grammar . That’s why it’s so important to provide effective literacy support to disadvantaged students who have difficulty reading. Our work with The Smith Family focuses on young people in need, using education through technology to help them reach their full potential.

The mobile student2student program helps students to significantly increase their reading skills. The program operates in selected rural and regional communities and caters for the increasing numbers of families who do not have a landline in their homes.

The program works by matching students with reading buddies who are at least two years older and trained to help develop literacy skills in others. Students use Optus mobile phones to read with their buddy three times a week over 18 weeks. Participants are able to keep the mobile phone and credits at the completion of the program.

In 2013, mobile student2student went national with 525 reading pairs across all states and territories. Around 52% of students were female and 48% were male. More than 20% of students identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander background which suggests the mobile model is particularly helpful in engaging these families. This is especially pertinent given that almost one in four Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander students did not meet the minimum standard in recent NAPLAN tests.6

“KALE WAS A VERY SICK LITTLE BOY THESE PAST TWO OR THREE YEARS AND

ENDED UP WITH A LOT OF TIME AWAY FROM SCHOOL...THIS PROGRAM KEPT HIM CONNECTED AND GAVE HIM SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO AND A GOAL TO ACHIEVE. SO THANK YOU TO ALL THAT ARE INVOLVED IN THIS WONDERFUL,

LIFE CHANGING PROGRAM.”

- Parent

Research shows that the mobile student2student program increases struggling reader’s literacy skills, self-confidence and motivation to read:

• More than nine out of 10 students (93%) improved their reading age, relative to the start of the program.

• Just over half (53%) improved by up to a year and 40% showed reading age increases of more than a year.

• 96% of students agreed their reading has improved since participating in mobile student2student.

• 96% of parents report their child’s reading has improved and 99% would recommend the program to other families.

3 Australian Bureau of Statistics 2013, Labour force status and other characteristics of families, June 2012.4 Department of Education Science and Training (2005), Teaching Reading: National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra5 Australian Council for Educational Research Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEEDCDYA) 2010 National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy Report6 Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2012

Digital Thumbprint at work in the classroom

Students showed increases through the Burt word literacy test

100

80

60

40

20

0

Students self-report reading skills improvement

Parents report their child’s reading has improved

93% 96% 96%

% Reading Improvement

READING IMPROVEMENT

STUDENT2STUDENT OPTUS GROWTH

600

500

400

300

200

100

0Pilot year 2010 1st year 2011 2nd year 2012 3rd year 2013

Number of Optus mobile phones distributed

50

260

327

525


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WE’RE THERE WHEN CUSTOMERS NEED IT MOST

We know too well the devastation of natural disasters in Australia. This year, we worked closely with relevant authorities during the New South Wales bushfires. Our Employee Assistance Program (EAP) was available to impacted employees. Customers who had lost their homes were provided with free prepaid phones and chargers. Our networks team was extremely efficient in restoring services in the impacted areas and we sent a ‘Sat Cat’ – a mobile satellite tower - to Springwood in the Blue Mountains.

In addition to disasters in our home country, we supported people impacted by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. This storm was one of the strongest cyclones ever recorded and devastated parts of the Philippines killing around 6,300 people.

The typhoon passed about 600km to the south of our call centre providers in Alabang and Makati in Manila. All of the 2,000 people who work in the area were confirmed safe and we provided support through the EAP.

Our Fixed and Postpaid customers in Australia had access to free calls to the Philippines so that they could check on their loved ones. We also sent 150 satellite phones valued at more than $172,000 to Globe Telecom (partially owned by the SingTel Group) to help people stay connected in areas where towers were down.

Our employees donated more than $25,700 to support World Vision’s Typhoon Haiyan Appeal. The SingTel Group donated $43,000 (SGD $50,000) on behalf of Optus and the SingTel Group to local Filipino relief efforts.

COMMUNITY

MAKE AUSTRALIAN COMMUNITIES MORE RESILIENTAs a large telco, we’ve got an important role to play in disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Our goal is to support our customers and communities who are impacted by natural disasters.

Through our involvement in the Australian Business Roundtable Disaster Resilience and Safer Communities, we aim to reduce the impact of disasters on people’s livelihoods. Other members of the Roundtable include Chief Executive Officers from Australian Red Cross, Insurance Australia Group, Investa Property Group, Munich Re and Westpac.

The Roundtable commissioned a comprehensive White Paper, ‘Building our Nation’s Resilience to Natural Disasters’, which was released in June 2013. The paper found that the economic cost of disasters would nearly quadruple by mid-century, rising to $23 billion annually. This cost could be halved with smart precautionary spending. The research confirms that an opportunity exists for Australia to design a more sustainable and comprehensive national approach to making communities safer and more resilient.

This year we deployed the Early Warning Location Based System which has the capability to send location-based warnings to customers on our mobile phone network during emergencies. It’s part of the Australian Government’s Emergency Alert telephone warning system which enables a text message to be sent to mobile phones in the vicinity of an emergency.

Our system was tested by the Victorian Government and launched in October 2013. The service is designed to reach active mobile phones that are roaming on Australia’s networks. Over the next 12 months we will deploy a further update to ensure that 4G phones are included in the coverage of this emergency warning system across our mobile network.


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OUR PEOPLE SHARE THE LOVE

WE SAY YES4GOODWe know that a company’s contribution to the community is an important part of attracting and retaining talented people. In fact, the 2013 ‘Your Voice’ survey tells us that CSR is continues to be one of the top three drivers of employee engagement.

In recognition of the strategic importance of CSR to our organisation, this year we partnered with Goodcompany and invested in Australia’s first integrated employee giving program – we called it yes4Good. It’s about building a great place to work and supporting our people to make a difference in the community.

This digital platform is a one-stop-shop where our people can give their time or money through volunteering, workplace giving and fundraising.

yes4Good recognises that people give to the community in different ways, some can give their time, some prefer to give money and many will do both. Whatever way our employees choose to give, we support them with charity vouchers valued at up to $100 to donate to any charity on the program.

This new model responds to the feedback from our people that they wanted more choice when it comes to donating to charities. yes4Good provides an open model of workplace giving, which means employees can donate to one or more of 250 charities listed. Previously our workplace giving program was limited to 13 charity partners.

Almost 1,000 employees have signed up to yes4Good and key results include:

• 632 employees donated $131,316 to 113 charities

• 989 employees volunteered 8,724 hours

• Eight employee fundraisers were promoted generating almost $40,000 in donations

Since 2005, our employees have donated $1,507,869 to community organisations through workplace giving.

COMMUNITY

Volunteering at The Gawler Foundation


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GIVE, GET GIVENThis year we helped to unleash the power of 4,200 young people to make a difference in the community. An Australian first, Optus Rockcorps is a dynamic youth movement which believes in the power of youth to make good things happen. This year volunteers gave almost 20,000 hours of volunteering to 59 community projects.

Doing good feels good and we’ve always been a big supporter of volunteering in the community. Optus Rockcorps is another way we’re saying More Yes to our customers. It’s a part of what we’re doing to become Australia’s most loved and recommended service brand. When a volunteer gives four hours of their time, we give them a music reward. We call it: ‘Give, Get Given’. Four hours may not seem like much, but between us, it adds up to a world of difference.

One of those rewards was a live, money-can’t-buy exclusive concert at Luna Park in Sydney. More than 3,000 volunteers were treated to performances from Australian singer-songwriter Samantha Jade, alternative electro pioneers Empire of the Sun, electronic music quartet Rudimental and American B&B artist Miguel. In the next 12 months, we’re looking to expand Optus Rockcorps to Brisbane and Melbourne. However, anyone can be involved by finding their own volunteer opportunity in their local community and telling us about. Every person who volunteers for four hours receives a $70 Ticketmaster voucher.

YES TO LOCAL COMMUNITIESWe’re saying More Yes to local communities through Optus Community Grants. Each year we invite not for profit organisations to apply for up to $10,000 in funding for projects which support vulnerable young people in the areas of education, wellbeing and access to technology. Our employees are encouraged to refer organisations that they care about.

SINCE 2008, NEARLY $1.2 MILLION HAS BEEN DISTRIBUTED NATIONALLY TO 200 COMMUNITY ORGANISATIONS. THIS YEAR WE

DISTRIBUTED $300,000 TO 38 COMMUNITY GROUPS.

One of the grants helped Parramatta’s Information and Cultural Exchange to purchase and improve computer skills for the region’s young migrants and refugees. Supported by funding of $7,648, the organisation was able to purchase seven iPad Minis, seven iPad Mini microphones and five computer programs to support its Open Access Program.

The Open Access program works with members of the migrant and refugee community to help them get the best possible start in their new home. It improves young people’s employment opportunities through computer-based filmmaking, music production and animation classes.

Another grant has helped Wollongong’s Top Blokes Foundation to expand its Junior Top Blokes mentoring program for teenage boys. Supported by funding of $10,000, mentors from Wollongong’s Top Blokes Foundation are running a 16 week, interactive workshop for teenage boys. Workshops address a range of common social issues confronting teenagers, including drugs and alcohol, relationships and mental health.

The sessions provide young men with positive male role models and help participants to develop the skills necessary to develop healthy relationships with their families and friends. The grant enables the Foundation to help a further 400 young men in Wollongong reach their full potential.

The Optus Limelight program at work

SHARE SKILLS AND SOLVE PROBLEMS Importantly this year our employee volunteering increased by almost 30% with nearly 990 people volunteering their time with community organisations. The value of this volunteering is almost $470,000, however the true value goes far beyond this.

One example is our ‘Pro Bono Lean’ program which is delivered by our Customer Experience Transformation office. The program leverages the specific skills of Optus employees who are Lean Six Sigma professionals to support non-profit organisations. The Lean Six Sigma methodology is a managerial concept that improves processes and performance. Our people are trained ‘Black Belts’ empowered to drive key change projects across our business.

This team is using its skills and expertise to provide community organisations with support to improve and focus greater attention on their core objectives. They’ve developed the ‘Limelight’ pathway to help organisations identify and solve problems, deliver value to customers and drive continuous improvement.

This pro bono service is well suited to address a specific project or problem by injecting knowledge and new perspectives. In addition, the variety of work that this initiative provides allows our people to improve their professional skills and broaden their experience.

The ‘Limelight’ pathway is a two day classroom based workshop followed by practical application of the methodology. This year five community organisations participated in Limelight: Youth Off The Streets; Tour De Cure; Karma Currency; Kids Helpline and the Australian Business Community Network.

Last year, our Limelight volunteers worked with Cancer Council Queensland to address some concerns about left over stock from Daffodil Day. The community organisation used the methodology to help map the returns process for the unused stock. The goal was to help identify areas for improvement and reduce storage costs by 25%. The project was very successful with key learnings being shared with the national body, Cancer Council Australia.

MENTORING MAKES SENSE

In 2005, we became a founding member of the Australian Business Community Network (ABCN) which provides practical support through a range of mentoring programs to students and teachers in areas of high need. Since the program was established our people have given more than 23,000 volunteer hours in company time.

This year, more than 360 employees participated in nine different programs giving more than 3,600 hours of their time to support over 700 young students and leaders.

Some of the key outcomes measured by the programs include:• Improved literacy, language skills and socialisation• Improved confidence and leadership skills• Improved knowledge and career pathways

During the year, together with ABCN we launched the FOCUS program which seeks to provide young women from high-needs schools with leadership skills to help build a successful, meaningful career. It’s part of our commitment to supporting women in leadership positions and encourages young women to take up the challenges of leadership and to reach their full potential.

“FOCUS WAS A GREAT OPPORTUNITY. I NEVER FELT MORE CONFIDENT ABOUT MY FUTURE AND I KNOW I CAN DO IT!”

- STUDENT

The program involves students working in small groups with female executives and leaders who act as role models and mentors. The results are outstanding with 100% of students reporting that they have a better understanding of their leadership potential and 100% of teachers saying that their students have demonstrated a greater motivation to succeed.

Students and mentor from the ABCN program

ON YOUR BIKE

Our people have actively supported Tour de Cure for the past five years. Tour de Cure raises awareness and funds for cancer research and treatment programs.To date it has raised more than $10 million supporting 114 vital cancer research projects.

Each year, Team Optus participates in the long and challenging ride which goes ahead despite weather conditions. Our riders undergo months of training in their own time to be fit enough to tackle this gruelling ride.

In 2013, the riders covered more than 1,500kms over 10 days starting in Adelaide and finishing in Canberra. We contributed an Optus record of $327,000 to Tour de Cure which will make a vital difference to people touched by cancer.

COMMUNITY


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MEASURING OUR COMMUNITY INVESTMENTOur total community investment for 2013-14 was $9.7 million which was a small increase on the previous year. We use the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) methodology to measure our community investment including cash, time, in-kind, leverage and management costs.

Our total community investment includes just over $700,000 in ‘leverage’ which was provided by our people, customers, franchisees and suppliers. This includes eight employee fundraising activities which generated almost $40,000 in donations.

2014 2013 2012 2011 2010

Community investment $m 9.7 9.4 7.2 8.9 8.2

Workplace giving $000 235 382 457 484 352

Employee volunteering hours 8,724 6,835 10,461 12,694 18,000

Our community investment also includes support for a number of charitable organisations through subsidised products and services. In 2013-14, these subsidies reached almost $2 million and included services such as the 1800 Kids Helpline freecall number and mobile phones and sim cards which were provided to customers impacted by natural disasters.

COMMUNITY

SUPPORT FOR AUSSIE STARTUPSOptus-Innov8 Seed is a collaboration between Optus and SingTel Innov8 which brings together funding and resources for Australian tech startups. It fosters innovation in Australia by supporting new ideas and businesses and offers us the opportunity to access technology early, to learn about emerging technologies and to create future opportunities for our business and customers.

Optus-Innov8 Seed invests out of the same fund established by SingTel Innov8 - a wholly-owned subsidiary of the SingTel Group. SingTel Innov8 is one of Southeast Asia’s leading corporate venture capital funds, with its own set of decision making, approval and funding processes. It has an initial fund size of S$200 million and has invested in over 40 companies across the globe.

Our investment activities focus on providing funding up to Australian tech startups of up to A$250,000 each. So far we’ve invested in two startups since establishment in 2012:

• 121cast which has launched Omny – a rethink of radio that provides a personalised audio feed for listening on the go; and

• VenueMob, an online marketplace that hooks up people needing a party venue with people who have one.

For all our portfolio companies, we provide additional support through access to co-working space, leveraging our network to help expansion throughout the region and providing mentors and subject matter experts.

We are also proud to be the first corporate sponsor of Fishburners, Australia’s largest co-working space for the entrepreneurial community which is located in Ultimo, New South Wales. Fishburners is a not-for-profit organisation which provides working space for over 200 startups and a hub for entrepreneurial and startup-related events.

We also support a Melbourne’s leading tech co-working space Inspire9 which is located in Richmond. Optus-Innov8 Seed is also a sponsor of angel investment group Innovation Bay, national app competition OzApps and the University of Sydney’s National Computer Science School.

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OUR APPROACH We aim to become the most loved and recommended service brand by our customers and our people. Our people are strong customer advocates and their belief and passion is directly linked to our performance.

We’re supporting our people to unleash their potential, to connect with our customers and each other and to drive brilliant customer experiences. Our people leaders play a crucial role in demonstrating the right values, behaviours and attitudes for our organisation.


• Improved our employee engagement score which is up 9% points to 73%

• Completed our first Brand Camp which touched every employee across Australia

• More than 1,800 employees participated in Listen Own and Value (LOV) training which helps our people develop skills to provide brilliant customer service

• Commenced a program to improve workplace health and safety processes and controls for contractors

• Undertook our first Regional Talent Exchange with one employee undertaking an international secondment in Jakarta

• Launched Optus Mates Rates – a new website that provides employees with access to amazing offers from over 1,000 brands and stores

PEOPLE 42 43


44 PEOPLE

UNLEASH OUR POTENTIALIT’S ALL ABOUT OUR PEOPLEPeople and culture are an integral part of our ambition to become Australia’s most loved and recommended service brand. Our strategy requires a strong focus on employee engagement and making sure that we continue to make a strong connection with our customers.

Our top 70 people leaders identified the two key words that underpin our strategy at a workshop in 2012:

• ‘Love’ – having an emotional connection with our people and our customers, and

• ‘Service’ – being a brand that puts customers at the heart of everything we do.

Our senior leaders spent four months listening to our people’s views across Australia about what it would take to make these two words underpin our way of business. We had to rediscover ourselves and make our way back to the founding principles of Yes. Our people needed to be at the centre of this strategy.

The feedback told us that some employees had lost faith in our brand. There was a ‘change weariness’ permeating through the organisation because previous programs had little history of success. Our key learning was that we needed to gain strong support from senior leaders to drive the change we needed to achieve our ambition.

BACK TO BASICS WITH BRAND CAMP Brand Camp was introduced to create leader-led cultural change within our organisation. Its objectives were to bring our brand to life for senior leaders and make people feel empowered to contribute to our strategy.

The key thing about Brand Camp was that it didn’t focus on the brand as a logo, but brand as an attitude of Yes connected to a set of behaviours that support an attitude of Yes.

More than 100 separate Brand Camps were held during June 2013. Some camps were large with over 50 people attending, others were small with individual teams and the largest roll-out was for the contact centre. More than 500 contact centre operators made their way through 40 Brand Camp sessions held in a marquee at our Macquarie Park campus.

Leaders were also encouraged to run Do-It-Yourself Brand Camps and were provided with online tools and change materials.

For the first time, change management initiatives were taken to call centres in India and the Philippines. While these call centres are outsourced, we work together as one team by ensuring senior leaders everywhere have an active involvement in our business. For that reason, senior leaders from Manila and Mumbai join our weekly operational meetings and everyone’s contact details are available in our online directory.

A quarterly internal People NPS survey conducted after Brand Camp revealed an unprecedented shift in employee advocacy.

A DECLARATION OF YES FOR OUR PEOPLE At the same time, we launched a Declaration of Yes for our people. The Declaration was a symbol that while we were making a promise to customers, we were also making a promise to our people. It reminded employees of our founding principles and empowered them to say Yes.

We asked employees to always think of our customer first, to solve problems before they became the burden of someone else and to speak up if they saw ways to do things better. Most importantly we promised them that we would all have a little fun along the way.

TAKING LEADERS TO THE TOPThe Leadership Summit was a two-day offsite workshop where 100 Optus leaders discussed how to build a more constructive culture that would support our ambition. The group heard from Optus’ first CEO, Bob Mansfield, about building a supportive culture that would help us make our way back to Yes. The session covered topics like: the power of leaders; giving and taking feedback; and raising self-awareness. The Summit was a critical part of engaging our leaders in their role and responsibilities to support leader-led cultural change.


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SUPPORT FOR OUR OWN PEOPLEWe know that improving employee health and wellbeing boosts organisational health and investing in this makes good business sense. Our business case is to improve work performance and productivity; reduce costs associated with absenteeism, presenteesim, disability and workers’ compensation; and to attract and retain talented employees.

This year we started to broaden the scope of the ‘My Wellbeing’ program with the aim to engage more people across the organisation no matter who they are or where they work. A network of wellbeing champions has been formed to address the challenge of engaging employees across diverse roles and locations.

Our specific goals are to increase employee knowledge of their own health status; improve employee health which leads to improved energy levels, resilience and productivity; and to deliver a positive return on investment. This year our focus included mental health, heart health, sleep, stress and overall fitness.

The number of employee visits to the wellbeing intranet site tripled to over 25,000. This provided employees with access to nutrition advice, heart checks and health risk assessments. In the past 12 months there were more than 1,200 health risk assessments.

Participation in both the heart health testing program and the annual physical activity challenge have increased by 41% and 63% respectively and the flu vaccination program saw a 30% participation rate.

The emerging importance of mental health at work has been supported by a significant investment to educate managers and human resource professionals through “Mental Health in the Workplace” hosted by Beyondblue. The launch of this new program generated a lot of interest and we plan to extend it further in 2014-15.

The Optus Healthy Minds initiative is another example of our focus on resilience and mental health. The program provides tailored programs for people leaders and HR professionals along with general sessions available to all employees. We also joined Sane Australia’s Mindful Employer Program, an eLearning workplace mental health training program and resource. These programs will continue throughout 2014-15 and will be part of a broader strategy to provide a psychologically healthy and safe workplace.

INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES TO GROWInternational opportunities are a great way to attract, retain and develop talented employees. A Regional Talent Exchange was established in 2012 to increase opportunities for employees to gain experience across the SingTel Group. The initial focus is young or emerging leaders who would benefit from an international role.

Our first international exchange was Darren Werner, an Optus marketing graduate who spent three months at the SingTel Group subsidiary, Telkomsel, in Jakarta. Darren worked in the Digital Lifestyle team applying his marketing skills to video, music, games and other online products.

According to Darren, Indonesians are among the most friendly and hospitable people he has ever met which made his transition to working and living in Jakarta much easier.

“Adapting to a new culture and way of doing business has been the most interesting yet challenging experience of my life,” he said.

Darren believes the Regional Talent Exchange is an invaluable opportunity to explore a new culture, learn about the broader SingTel Group business and to exchange ideas with colleagues in Asia. “My team and mentor provided me with the perfect level of support in my development, learning and exposure to an emerging and dynamic market. I will remember the daily lunches in the pantry, the laughter after our cultural and language misunderstandings and the after work basketball and Futsal fun,” said Darren.

This year five employees across the SingTel Group took part in the program and our future plans are to have a minimum of 12 employees access secondment opportunities. These young, talented employees will work on strategic projects giving them the exposure to the broader business and an opportunity to understand the different markets we operate in and their unique challenges.

MORE ACTIVE LEADERSHIPThe role of leadership is one of the most critical elements of our ambition to become Australia’s most loved and recommended service brand.

Our People NPS results had revealed that detractors believed that some leaders were not ‘walking the talk’. Following Brand Camp, employees had an expectation around the culture and behaviours that are desired within our organisation. Our people are seeking an alignment between our aspirational culture and behaviours and their day-to-day experience.

A new set of leadership capability expectations were developed to address these challenges and respond to future business needs. Leaders must be able to:

• Think strategically

• Build a collaborative culture

• Drive innovation and change

• Deliver outcomes

• Engage and develop talent

We’re aligning our leadership capabilities and behaviours to better support our brand and business strategy. A range of training initiatives have been developed to better support our leaders including:

• Coaching for Performance – a development opportunity which equips leaders with the critical skill of coaching others to support quality

• Constructive Leadership – a tool called Lifestyles Inventory (LSI) which helps to build greater self-insight into how personal style impacts culture and performance

• SCORE – a group-wide capability framework which is used to develop the broad leadership capabilities that are essential for us to success now and in the future.

CEO RECRUITMENTWe’re conducting an international search for a new CEO. Paul O’Sullivan, Group CEO Consumer at the SingTel Group, is covering the Consumer Australia CEO and Country Chief Officer roles. He was previously the CEO of Optus for eight years.

Paul and his management team are committed to the strategy that was put in place two years ago and are focused on accelerating our market momentum, extending our lead in customer experience and transforming our business.

We’re confident that we’ve got a strong leadership team in place to work with our people and deliver the goal of becoming Australia’s most loved and recommended service brand.

A SAFE WORKPLACEThe health and safety of our people and contractors is one of our top priorities. The governance structure for Workplace, Health and Safety (WH&S) was reviewed and upgraded during 2013 to reflect the strategic importance of a healthy and safe workforce. There’s oversight of WH&S at a number of levels in our organisation, extending to the SingTel Group board.

The two key groups that manage the oversight and implementation of WH&S are the Executive Safety Leadership Council (ESLC) and the Senior Safety Group (SSG). Governance, oversight and compliance are part of the ESLC whilst business planning and execution of safety plans takes place within the SSG. Both forums have changed their Charters to provide a more strategic approach to WH&S issues in our organisation.

The WH&S team was restructured in 2013 to refocus on two key areas – support for business units and a new Centre of Excellence. Our strategy drives prevention activities in health and physical safety and we’ve formally adopted best practice principles to ensure high standards and continuous improvement.

We’ve continued to review and update policies and processes related to bullying and harassment in the workplace. From this emerged the need for a new avenue for employees to seek assistance and obtain resolutions to work related issues. A “Fair Treatment Help Line” has been created in addition to the existing EAP. In 2014 we were successful in achieving our target to reduce Lost Time Injury Rate (LTIR) by 5% with a result of 0.7. Our Lost

Time Severity Rate (LTSR) was 19.8 – an increase on 2013 due to fewer injuries with a longer duration.

DUTY OF CARE TO CONTRACTORSThe type of work we commission and manage through contractors can range from low to high WH&S risk, including high risk construction work. Some examples of high risk work (from a safety perspective) that contractors perform include: engineering project works including heating, ventilation and air-conditioning installation; the supply and installation of batteries used in exchanges and mobile base stations; and waste disposal at our sites.

We’ve commenced a major program which focuses on improving WH&S processes and controls for our management of contractors. This program was informed by an independent gap analysis of work and safety requirements for contractor management.

Our objectives are to further embed WH&S risk mitigation in our culture through a comprehensive safety governance framework which aligns with the Work Health and Safety Act 2011. The program will deliver a consistent bid and transition process that includes WH&S risk assessments, a comprehensive Contractor Management System and a change management and review program.

The Contractor Management System will assist us to manage the contractor process, including the management of incidents. We conducted a pilot of the system from January to March 2014. After incorporating stakeholder feedback, we’re commencing the rollout of the system more broadly. This includes using it in parallel with our implementation of WHS considerations within our procurement processes, policies, systems, and risk assessments. The new platform will have a vendor governance section that enables vendor records including WH&S to be kept, managed and updated.

We’re also rolling out an online pre-qualification system for contractors called Cm3 which assesses a contractor’s health and safety management capability and has been developed to assist contractors to demonstrate and promote their health and safety capabilities. The system is used to pre-qualify contractors to ensure they have the capability to comply with our WH&S policies, standards and legislative requirements.

PEOPLE

Flu vaccination program Heart Health program launched Strive - Physical Wellbeing Challenge

Positive - Our mental health awareness program

MY WELLBEING - 12 MONTHS OF ACTIVITIES

Alive - Nutrition program launched Financial Wellbeing program launched

“ONE OF THE THINGS I LEARNT DURING MY FIRST FEW WEEKS IS THE IMPORTANCE OF FLEXIBILITY.

THINGS DON’T ALWAYS GO TO PLAN IN BUSINESS AND DEVELOPING THE ABILITY TO SELF-MANAGE EXPECTATIONS IS ESSENTIAL

TO STAYING FOCUSED.”


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WE HEAR YOUYour Voice is our annual employee engagement survey. It’s a detailed questionnaire capturing views on how we make our organisation a great place to work and how we can better provide brilliant service to our customers. The survey helps us to identify what’s working well and what needs improving and the results feed into our Annual Operating Plan process.

In 2013, 82% of employees participated in the survey. The results highlighted significant improvements across the board with our overall engagement score up 9 points to 74%. Feedback included that we needed to make it easy for our customers to do business with us, improving our operational execution, as well as improving leadership and communication.

The good news is that we’ve made big in-roads to improve these areas. Our people have a much clearer understanding of our goals and why we need to change thanks to better communication from our leaders and initiatives like Brand Camp. We’re continuing to work on this in the year ahead.

However, our people also sent a clear message that we need to make it easier to look after customers and for them to deal with us. Improving systems and processes is top of the list.

These results reflect an enormous shift in a very short space of time.

In addition to Your Voice, we also conduct the People Net Promoter Score (NPS) - a quarterly survey that consists of a short questionnaire. It measures our people’s willingness to recommend our organisation as a place to work and a place to do business. The results are used as a check point of our progress. Research shows that high employee engagement leads to a higher level of employee advocacy.

Our People NPS improved 17 points over the last 12 months. The results tell us that our employees are most likely to be an Optus advocate if they’ve recently interacted with our frontline teams. We believe these improvements are driven off the back of our commitment to creating a customer centric culture, strong market offerings and an ongoing commitment to improving our network. Our people have also highlighted some concerns about our ability to stay the course and deliver on our strategy.

To respond to these concerns, we’ve been out on the road with the All People Updates sharing our plan for the year ahead. We believe these sessions demonstrate the capacity of our leaders to build on the great work we’ve already done and continue the momentum.

Further key initiatives to respond to employee feedback in the past year include:

• The launch of a new group-wide intranet platform, Espresso, which provides a wide range of user friendly tools to help our people better connect with each other, including their colleagues at the SingTel Group. • A refresh of the support materials and documents required for Performance and Development Reviews (PDRs). The new process is focused on employees and managers having open and honest conversations rather than lengthy forms required to support the process. • We’ve rewritten our 30 most popular people policies and the

top 100 Frequency Asked Questions to make them user friendly and easy to understand. We’ve also introduced online requests and webchat to support HR queries.

DIFFICULT DECISIONS

During the past 18 months, we’ve re-organised our business to drive greater efficiencies and ensure we’ve got the right structure in place to support our customers and business priorities.

During the reporting period, there were 290 employees that were impacted by these changes. Where possible we make every effort to redeploy any impacted employees into suitable alternative roles. However, given the nature of these changes there were limited opportunities for redeployment within Optus.

While these are always difficult decisions to make, our priority is to ensure impacted employees are fully supported throughout the process. All employees who were retrenched were provided with:

• A retrenchment package which includes a payment in lieu of notice, severance payment and the balance of any annual leave or long service leave (if applicable);

• Outplacement support provided through an external career service provider;

• Access to our Employee Assistance Program for themselves and their families should they require it; and

• Continuation of employee discounts on Optus products and services for a period of three months.

PEOPLE

WE LOV OUR CUSTOMERSMore than 1,800 employees have completed around 12,500 hours of LOV training. LOV is a program focused on helping employees to Listen, Own and Value (LOV) their interactions with our customers. There are a series of courses under the LOV program including communication, conversations, service, negotiation and problem solving. Once an employee has demonstrated their commitment to LOV they are named an Optus Ambassador. It’s about being restless in creating meaningful and memorable moments for our customers, providing More Yes and leaving a lasting impression of our brand.Once an employee has become an Optus Ambassador, they can be named a VIP or Elite Ambassador by really bringing LOV to life and providing an extra-special experience for the customer by making Value personal. We celebrate our VIP and Elite Ambassadors, share their customer calls in internal meetings and learn from their success.

In the past year, 9,158 people based in Australia undertook at least one learning activity and a total of 1,493 programs were offered including 75 compliance/regulatory related programs. On average, Optus employees undertook 28.5 hours of learning in the past year.

LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT HOURS

AVERAGE HOURS OF TRAINING 2013-14

Employee category Total Women Men

Executive 12.6 16.9 11.3

Senior manager 15.2 17.2 14.4

Manager 20.8 20.7 20.9

Associate / Consultant 33.1 30.0 34.3

Operational support 22.4 18.5 25.9

IT’S ALL ABOUT CARING FOR METhis year we launched a new service hotline and app called CARE4ME – which is just for employees. The CARE4ME team is on standby to help our people with anything and everything related to our products and services. This team also contacts new starters to tell them about the great discounts they can enjoy as part of the Optus family.

Our CARE4ME team has an average NPS of +78! That’s the highest NPS of any team across our business.

In addition to CARE4ME, we’ve also launched Optus Mates Rates - a new website that brings together amazing offers from over 1,000 leading brands and stores. We’ve partnered with deal expert, Reward Gateway, to make sure our people have access to the best offers. The best part is that employees can also treat their friends and family so that everyone can make the most of all the great benefits on Mates Rates.

International Women’s Day guest speakers Melanie Gow from World Vision, Professor Marian Baird University of Sydney Business School with Optus MD from Sales Rohan Ganeson and Gus Cerezo VP Customer Operations

A TRULY DIVERSE ORGANISATIONOne of our key focus areas is to increase workplace awareness about the benefits of a truly inclusive organisation. During the year, we held two events to engage our employees in diversity and to generate a discussion about ways we can support change within our business.

We explored the theme of ‘Inspiring Change’ on International Women’s Day through a campus event with keynote speakers. We also celebrated our diversity during A Taste of Harmony week where employees were invited to a cultural learning session followed by team lunches and a market festival day with food and culinary activities.

In the coming year, we plan to articulate our vision for diversity across the entire SingTel Group supported by the establishment of a new Diversity Council.

L Listen I LISTEN to what you have to sayO Own I OWN my actions and outcomesV Value I VALUE all my working relationships

LOV


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KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Priority Indicator 13/14 12/13 11/12 10/11 09/10

Workforce FTE 9,088 8,880 9,835 10,329 10,394

Gender % Male 68 69 67 66 66

Female 32 31 33 34 34

Employment type* % Full-time 93 93 92 92 93

Part-time 6 6 7 6 6

Casual 1 1 1 2 1

Age group % 16-29 21 17 20 24 24

29-49 64 68 65 63 63

50+ 15 15 14 13 13

Turnover % Voluntary Attrition 8 10 13 13 10

Male 9 9 13 13 -

Female 10 14 12 14 -

<35 11 16 21 19 -

36 – 59 7 7 12 9 -

60+ 7 5 11 9 -

Diversity Ratio of basic salary men to women 1.0:0.90 1.0:1.0 1.0:0.97 1.0:0.97 1.0:0.96

Females in executive positions 11 11 17 17 16

Discrimination Claims for discrimination 1 1 1 0 0

Flexibility % Employees utilising flexible working arrangements 63 63 60 57 58

Employee survey % Participation in employee satisfaction survey 82 77 88 87 87

Collective bargaining agreement %

Coverage of the Employee Partnership Agreement (EPA) 58 56 60 68 70

Safety % Lost Time Severity Rate 19.8 12.7 18.1 13.2 13.2

Lost Time Injury Rate 0.7 1.8 2.4 2.5 3.1

*Note – ‘full-time’ and ‘part-time’ includes permanent employees. ‘Casual’ includes temporary staff.

51

WE VALUE

YOU

53

OUR APPROACH We’re committed to understanding, managing and minimising the environmental impact of our operations. We achieve this through energy management and technology and an ongoing focus on education and engagement with employees and contractors.

We’re actively understanding and managing our resource use and waste with a focus on efficient energy consumption. While there is much more work to be done, we’re building strong foundations with a robust approach to governance and reporting.


• Conducted a pilot of a new office lighting solution at Macquarie Park

• Achieved modest energy savings of 3,805 gigajoules

• Recognised with an award for being a Cycling Friendly Business

• Reduced our water usage by 9% at Macquarie Park

• Year-on-year reductions in fuel usage for the past six years

ENVIRONMENT COMMUNITY

TELEPHONE EXCHANGES OF THE FUTUREAs our network grows, so too does the demand on our telephone exchanges. Telephone exchanges are an integral part of the Optus telecommunications network. A telephone exchange houses the system of switches and connections that connect telephone calls from the dialler to the caller.

Exchanges of the future will have much bigger energy requirements and hence reliable cooling so our customers can keep on talking.

While current exchange technology has served us well to date, our new exchange rack standard positions us for future increases in power usage. Developed across our organisation and the broader SingTel Group, the Group Rack Standard sees the introduction of pre-provisioned equipment racks that save space, are more energy efficient, are cheaper to run and are more reliable.

In the event of power loss, new exchanges will be capable in some circumstances of running without mechanical cooling, a huge win for our customers in terms of service reliability and for us in terms of potential energy savings as we expand the use of this improved capability.

More simply, we’re looking forward to our new energy efficient exchanges saving our business significant energy and expense as they are progressively rolled out over the coming few years.

A JOINT APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGY Two heads are better than one when it comes to developing great ideas. That’s why we worked with our parent company the SingTel Group to develop a Strategic Environmental Themes Discussion Paper.

We’ve put our collective knowledge, passion for environment and tenacity together to identify:

• Material environmental issues in our supply chain

• Strategic environmental themes for the SingTel Group

• A five year plan for key focus areas

• An enhanced environmental governance structure

More information about the Group-wide approach will be communicated in next year’s report.

52


54 ENVIRONMENT

ENERGISED ABOUT ENERGY

SHARED GOALS FOR ENERGY MANAGEMENTOur governance structure focuses on energy management which is a material issue for our business. It includes an Energy Steering Committee which provides strategic oversight and guidance to policy and objectives across the business. Members of this Committee convene monthly and include Vice Presidents of Fixed Networks, Group CSR, Property and Mobile alongside business Directors of Infrastructure Services and Environment.

In addition, the Energy Efficiency Working Group, which includes internal subject matter experts, is responsible for qualifying and quantifying energy related initiatives. We also have a dedicated Energy Manager whose role is to work with both of these groups to update our strategy and maintain momentum across the entire business.

In the next 12 months, we’ll be implementing a new governance structure which is closely linked with the SingTel Group. The purpose of this new structure is to share ideas and best practice across all SingTel Group companies and to give more exposure to environmental impacts at the Management Committee and Board levels.

ENERGY CONSUMPTIONWe experienced a small increase in energy use this year consuming a total of 1,407,028 gigajoules (GJ). While energy use increased, overall Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions remain virtually unchanged from last year, increasing only 0.3% year-on-year.

The majority of our energy usage is electricity (97%) and consumption across our business remains constant with our networks at 55% including data centres and telephone exchanges and satellite followed by mobile base stations at 36%. While our energy profile remains constant, electricity usage continues to reflect increasing demand by our customers. Mobile electricity consumption increased 4% from the previous year.

(GJ) ENERGY USE:

Network: 55%

Mobile: 36%

Corporate: 9%

Total: 100%

MEASURING WHAT WE MANAGEEnergy management is an integral part of how we operate. We monitor our approach to ensure we are getting maximum return for our efforts. We’re confident that our new energy audit methodology for our thousands of Base Transceiver Stations is industry leading, addressing key energy drivers such as geography and climate, ICT equipment, voice and data traffic, cooling equipment and the overall type / purpose of facility.

The methodology formed an integral part of our Commonwealth obligations under the Energy Efficiency Opportunities (EEO) program. We plan to expand our energy audit program across our network and corporate facilities in the next reporting period.

OUR EXCHANGES ARE PRETTY COOLLast year we reported our efforts to capture ‘free cooling’ cost savings in our telephone exchanges. Free cooling is now a standard design feature of all new mobile facilities where the climate is suitable.

In the coming year we’re anticipating to revisit a large number of mobile base stations, which were previously not considered commercially viable. But with the continued escalation in energy costs many of them are now potentially cost effective, enabling us to save both energy costs and emissions.

TURNING THE LIGHTS OFFWe need good lighting in our workplaces to be productive, but it doesn’t need to come at a cost to the environment or our bottom line. We’re piloting a future-proofed office lighting solution at Macquarie Park which is perfectly matched to utilisation even if our usage patterns change.

New LED fixtures and occupancy sensors have been installed and are expected to use around 30 per cent less energy than the old lighting system. The building’s green star rating has improved by at least ½ a star and is a great example of our commitment to reducing the impact of our operations.

ENERGY IS LOOKING A WHOLE LOT BRIGHTERWhile energy efficiency and carbon remain important to our business, we also have a renewed focus on Energy Performance Management. This approach often provides cost reductions to our business without an associated energy or carbon savings through careful management of our energy supply contracts and usage patterns. Initiatives cover a broad spectrum ranging from Power Factor Correction, through to improved data management, bill validation or procurement.

While we reported only a relatively modest energy cost saving of 3805GJ this year, considerable cost avoidance initiatives were successfully delivered throughout the year. One such initiative is our continued focus on improving power usage effectiveness (PUE) at our major technical facilities. These efforts continue to yield significant savings year-on-year in addition to highlighting facilities that require extra attention, subsequently leading to further savings opportunities.

Optus takes part in Earth Hour


56 ENVIRONMENT

HEALTHY WAYS TO GET TO WORKHow we travel to work each day can have great benefits for our health, our wellbeing and the environment. This year we launched the ‘Connect Macquarie Park + North Ryde’ Transport Management Association (TMA). Chaired by Optus, the TMA is a partnership between the City of Ryde, Transport for NSW and local Macquarie Park businesses. Together, we are helping local employees get to work more easily.

As more employees got on their bikes this year, Optus was recognised with a Cycling Friendly Business Award from the Australian Bicycle Achievement Awards. Since then we’ve also expanded our active transport facilities including doubling the size of our secure cycle cage, expanding the shower and change room facilities in both buildings and increasing our number of cycle racks to 330 to better cater for our cycling community.

EMPLOYEE MODE OF TRANSPORT%

Drive alone 39%

Ride share 11%

Public transport (including Optus bus) 41%

Active transport (walking & cycling) 5%

Motorbike/scooter 4%

FLEET EFFICIENCIESLast year we rewrote the vehicle purchase policy to require use of diesel vehicles and to specify fuel consumption and carbon emissions ratings. As a result of that policy, more than 75% of our fleet are diesel vehicles. As at March 2014, there were 392 vehicles in our fleet. Our fuel consumption has remained relatively flat with a 4% decrease on the previous year.

OPTUS FLEET FUEL CONSUMPTION

EVERY DROP COUNTSOur head office in Macquarie Park, New South Wales uses harvested rainwater as much as possible. This year we used 91,955 kilolitres of water, 9% less than last year due to water saving initiatives. Of this 23,649 kilolitres was harvested (approximately 26%) and used for toilet flushing and landscape irrigation. That’s enough water to fill approximately 440 average sized backyard swimming pools in Australia.

Gathering data on water use at other Optus sites has not been possible as water use is paid for through the cost of renting the premises and is rarely separately metered.

The reality is that our operations and activities don’t discharge much water. Our main source for discharge is water used in bathrooms in our corporate offices, discharged to the local sewage system.

WASTE NOT WANT NOTOur goal is to minimise our use of materials and maximise recycling.

The majority of our waste is generated at our corporate offices in Macquarie Park. All paper, cardboard, toner and printer cartridges are recycled. In 2014 more than 86% of our waste was diverted from landfill including 154 tonnes of paper and cardboard.

This year we improved our reporting of waste across the 45 sites where we manage our own waste removal. Significantly, this year’s reporting includes figures for our Macquarie Park campus which was not included last year due to a change in service providers. We produced 1,271 tonnes of general, co-mingled waste including paper and cardboard. At the sites we multi-tenant, waste is managed as part of the tenancy and we have not been able to monitor recycling rates.

In addition, all of our consumer customers have the ability to access their bill online or by email. This year there was a small increase in customers who use this service (48% in 2014, compared to 44% in 2013) and don’t receive a paper bill.

Across the network, we annually replace and recycle industrial size lead acid batteries that are used in exchanges and mobile base stations for backup power. Our replacement contracts now include as standard the removal, reuse and/or proper disposal by suitably qualified service providers. Approximately 6,000 industrial batteries were replaced and recycled this year.

LOOKING AFTER AUSTRALIA’S BIODIVERSITYLake Conjola is a small town situated on the south coast of New South Wales (NSW). We’re planning a new optic-fibre cable route in the area.

We’ve worked with NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service to ensure two endangered orchid species known to occur along the proposed cable route have been protected. A detailed vegetation survey was undertaken and appropriate mitigation measures were put in place to ensure there will be no impact on these endangered species. These measures have included redesigning a section of the route.

MUSTER UP YOUR OLD MOBILEMobile phones are not biodegradable and contain substances that can potentially harm the environment if not handled correctly at the end of a phone’s useful life. Our aim is to ensure that customers can recycle their mobile phones easily and safely.

We’ve been a member of MobileMuster since 1998 and this year we recycled 4.8 tonnes or around 18,787 phones.

MobileMuster is celebrating its 15 year anniversary. Since then, the mobile phone industry has collected and recycled more than 1,000 tonnes of old mobile phones, batteries, chargers and accessories - keeping them out of landfill.

Recycling materials properly is a high priority and the telco industry recovery rate of 93% complies with the new Australia and New Zealand Standard for the collection, storage, transport and treatment of end-of-life electrical and electronic equipment (AS/NZS 5377:2013). This has been independently assured by PwC.

In 2012-13 the materials recovered by the entire industry replaced the need to mine at least 2,270 tonnes of precious metal ores for gold, silver and copper as well as iron ore, aluminum and other metals. In addition, the emission of over 690 tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases were avoided which is the equivalent of taking over 190 cars permanently off the road for a year or planting 4,240 trees.

Mobile phones can be recycled at any Optus retail outlet.

SEARCHING FOR ALL ‘BRIGHT SPARKS’This year we focused on raising awareness of the environment and in particular energy efficiency with our people. We introduced the inaugural ‘Bright Sparks’ award which asked employees to contribute their ideas around how we could save energy. It’s another way we are saying More Yes to the environment.

The winning entry for the competition was a WiFi enabled device which allows remote control of electrical appliances such as lights, televisions, air conditioning or computers. The device is operated through an app on a smartphone or tablet. The winner was selected by our Energy Efficiency Working Group and received a new iPad, on which she can now remotely control her appliances at home.

The business-wide energy ideas register is just one way that we’re asking employees to give us their ongoing ideas and examples of energy efficiency. This year around 300 ideas have been contributed to the register. Ideas that are deemed to have potential are circulated and discussed by our Energy Efficiency Working Group for technical review or business case development.

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Priority Indicator Unit 13/14 12/13 11/12 10/11 09/10

Fleet Vehicles Number 392 457 572 534 534

Petrol use litres 255,939 421,619 663,179 895,723 982,239

Diesel use (mobile) litres 665,347 583,471 448,017 329,640 337,379

Total litres 923,116* 1,005,090 1,111,187 1,225,898 1,319,618

Energy use Electricity use MWH 378,797 369,090 348,000 336,608 292,468

GJ 1,363,670 1,328,724 1,295,735 1,256,804 -

GHG emissions Scope 1 and 2 emission Tonnes CO2e 346,102 344,997 331,593 325,465 310,130

Air travel Flights Tonnes CO2e 10,078 9,058 8,006 7,640 6,971

Water use Macquarie Park campus Kilolitres 91,955 97,872 116, 959 142,732 -

Paper use Applicable customers using online billing Percentage 48** 44** 49.6 44 31

Waste and recycling Recycling rate at head office Percentage diversion 86 n/a** 93 92 89

Mobile Muster Tonnes 4.8 5.4 5.6 4.5 4.4

* Includes Oil and Grease (1,830 litres) **Previously online billing was only available to 75% of our consumer customers. This year it was extended 100% of our customers, reflecting the slight decline in take-up.*** All waste at head office was sent to a bioreactor landfill.

Diesel Use (mobile)665,347 litres

Petrol & Ethanol Use255,939 litres

Oil & Grease1,830 litres

TOTAL34,395 GJ


58

MARKETPLACE AND CUSTOMERS TARGETS

TARGET RESULT DDESCRIPTION

1Launch the Optus ‘Virtual Agent’ which will guide the customer through common service transactions

AchievedThe Optus Virtual Agent has answered over 4 million of our customers’ questions – averaging more than 100,000 questions each week. And with a 95% accuracy rate that is always improving, it’s getting smarter every day.

2Launch an online tool to provide customers with live network status updates

Partially achievedA manual process provides outage updates to employees and customers. A fully automated solution for mobile and fixed customers is planned for 2014-15.

3Launch an online resource to support cyber safety for our customers and their families

Did not achieveCapital allocation for the project was de-prioritised this year. As a result the initiative did not proceed.

4Continue to rollout enhanced training for our agents including negotiation and difficult conversations and bill shock

AchievedMore than 1,800 employees have participated in an aspect of LOV training including our Customer Care teams in Manila and Mumbai.

5Reduce TIO complaints to two complaints per 10,000 subscribers

AchievedWe ended the year (31st of March 2014) at 1.78 complaints per 10,000 subscribers.

6

Upgrade our existing technology and systems to integrate the new national location-based mobile telephone emergency warning system across our mobile network

AchievedThe Early Warning Location Based System was launched in October 2013. This year we will deploy a further update to ensure that 4G phones are included in this across our network.

7 Continue to improve our Net Promoter Score™ Achieved

Our market NPS has increased to +5 from -25 last year. This means we’ve got more customers who’d recommend us to their family and friends than not. Our NPS surveys have been extended to new customer interactions, including in-store service, insurance and prepaid recharge.

2015 TARGETS• Add more than 400 greenfield sites to strengthen our network

• Expand our metropolitan and regional 4G network to reach 90% of the Australian population

• Continue to improve our market NPS

• Maintain TIO complaint volumes at or below 2.0 complaints per 10,000 subscribers

• Introduce the virtual agent services on the small-to-medium section of the Optus website

PROGRESS AGAINST 2014 TARGETS PROGRESS AGAINST 2013-14 TARGETS

TARGET RESULT DDESCRIPTION

1Explore new ways to educate and engage our customers and employees in the issues impacting vulnerable youth

Achieved

We used a range of promotions to engage our customers and employees in the issues impacting vulnerable youth. For example we offered our people the opportunity to refer their children’s schools to programs like Kids Helpline @ School and Digital Thumbprint.

2Launch a new program to support digital education initiatives in schools with a focus on safe and responsible use of the internet and mobile phones

Achieved

We launched Australia’s leading digital education program called ‘Digital Thumbprint’ reaching 35,800 students since the program was launched in 2013 including 25,000 students this year.

3Work with The Smith Family to expand the mobile ‘student2student’ program to 525 students nationally

AchievedThe mobile student2student program was expanded nationally with 525 reading pairs (1,050 students) across all states and territories.

4

Launch an industry leading integrated online giving portal to increase employee volunteering from eight per cent to 15 per cent and workplace giving from 3.5 per cent to eight per cent

Partially achieved

Since launching yes4Good, we have seen an increase in people donating time and money. Around 11.5% of our people are volunteering and 7.5% participate in workplace giving.

5Introduce new ways for our employees to be involved in the ‘yes’ Community Grants program with a focus on increasing the number of applications endorsed by employees

Achieved

Four employee committees were established representing each state/territory. These committees reviewed and rated the grant applications to select a shortlist of grants. We also received a record 104 applications from our people who endorsed grant applications.

2015 TARGETS• Achieve literacy improvement of 82% and program retention rate of 80% for mobile student2student program

• Increase volunteering from 10% to 15% including ABCN programs

• Continue workplace giving momentum towards 8% employee participation

• Continue to build on our Digital Thumbprnt program ensuring young people are educated about cyber safety

• Reach 5,000 primary students nationally through Kids Helpline @ School

COMMUNITY TARGETS


60

PROGRESS AGAINST 2013-14 TARGETS

TARGET RESULT PROGRESS

1Conduct energy assessments on one corporate facility and two network facilities

AchievedWe audited five network facilities: Riverwood, Choc, Belrose, Rosebery and Blacktown and one corporate facility in Mulgrave.

2Develop a comprehensive Energy Efficiency Opportunity (EEO) procedure for Optus

Achieved

The energy steering committee, energy ideas register and efficiency working group have been successfully established and assist with not only EEO obligations but also broader energy governance across the business.

3Develop an internal base station electromagnetic energy audit template and the carry out of five base station audits by end of March 2014

AchievedFive base station audits focusing on site security and general EME safety issues were completed in Sydney in March 2014.

4

In line with our Australian Packaging Covenant obligations, expand the packaging review across the following product categories: starter packs; SIM cards; Accessories; Home Zone and Optus Tv

Achieved

The packaging review was expanded this year to cover 4 out of the 5 product categories that Optus sells to consumers. The product category "Accessories" was not covered in the review process as Optus do not sell any "Optus" branded accessories to customers (the pre-requisite for carrying out a review).

5Introduce a program to improve staff awareness and engagement in energy efficiency initiatives

Achieved

We’ve improved staff awareness through a business wide ideas register addressing energy issues and an inaugural ‘Bright Sparks’ award for energy efficiency.

6Trial a new initiative aimed at reducing costs and footprint associated with taxi usage

AchievedWe completed a taxi usage study and unfortunately the findings were that usage was too ad hoc to replace with a bus service.

7Introduce a full environmental training program for employees involved in the installation and maintenance of network facilities

Partially achievedThis is a continuous process which has been implemented this year.

2015 TARGETS• Implement an energy intensity metric kWh/TB for mobile traffic (voice & data combined)

• Undertake Level II energy audits on a minimum of eight major network facilities

• Commence Representative Assessments of Mobile Base Stations in accordance with approved methodology

• Implement an environmental audit program across major networks projects

• Develop pre-construction and site inspection checklists for environmental issues

PROGRESS AGAINST 2013-14 TARGETS

TARGET RESULT PROGRESS

1Achieve a 5% reduction on Lost Time Injury Rate (LTIR)

AchievedOur LTIR was 0.7, a decrease on the previous year. Our WHS performance continues to be leading practice in comparison to available data.

2Achieve a 10% reduction on Lost Time Severity Rate (LTSR)

Not achieved

Our LTSR was 19.8 – a substantial increase on 2013. This reflected a fewer number of severe injuries, combined with a longer duration of days lost. We continue to set aggressive targets and strive to continually improve our performance.

3 Obtain a 2% increase in employee engagement AchievedOur engagement score lifted from 64% to 73% which was an extremely positive year on year shift.

4 Maintain employee attrition rate at 10% or less AchievedOur voluntary attrition is 8.4%, a strong improvement on last year’s rate of 10%.

5Achieve a positive improvement in Employee Net Promoter Score

AchievedOur People NPS result increased 17 points over 12 months

2014-15 TARGETS• Develop an employee education and support program focused on mental health issues

• Provide a minimum of 12 employees with access to international secondment opportunities through the Regional Talent Exchange

• Improve our employee engagement score by 3% points for Consumer Australia and 5% points for Optus Business

• Increase our people NPS by 3% points

PEOPLE TARGETS

ENVIRONMENT TARGETS


62

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION2013 AUSTRALIAN COMMUNICATIONS ALLIANCE AND COMMSDAY (ACOMMS) AWARDS

• Community Contribution – Critical network support during extreme weather events NSW and QLD

• Satellite provider of the year – First Release Satellite Service (FRSS) as a managed service provider to NBN Co.

• Communications Ambassador – Paul O’Sullivan for strong leadership and outstanding contribution to the co-operative development and growth of their industry

2013 AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT NATIONAL TRAINING EXCELLENCE AWARDS

• Organisational Learning Effectiveness: General Enquiries and Billing Induction

2013 SMART AWARDS

• Excellence in Supply Chain and Logistics: Optus Procurement Team

2013 CONTACT CENTRE WORLD AWARDS

• Best use of Social media in a Contact Centre – outstanding focus on customers - Gold

• Best Technology Innovation – Internal Solution - customer call back – Gold

• Best Help Desk: Web chat team - Silver

2013 GLOBAL CONTACT CENTRE OF THE WORLD AWARDS

• Best use of Social Media in a Contact Centre – Social Media Response Team – Gold

• Best Technology Innovation in a Mega Centre – Call Centre Technology Team – Gold

2013 AUSTRALIAN EVENT AWARDS

• Best Charity or Cause Related Event – Optus Rockcorps

2013/14 10TH ANNUAL FROST & SULLIVAN ASIA PACIFIC ICT AWARDS

• Best Customer Experience in Telecommunications – Optus Sales In Store

2013/14 GLOBAL REVIEWS DIGITAL CUSTOMER SERVICE

• Optus – ranked Australian Number 1 Telco


64GRI INDEX

GRI DISCLOSURE LEVEL LOCATION OF DISCLOSURE PG

1.1 Senior executive statement Fully

A Message from Chua Sock Koong

A Message from Paul O’Sullivan

SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Chairman’s Statement

4

5

10

1.2 Description of key impacts, risks, and opportunities FullyA Message from Paul O’SullivanSustainability Targets

558-61

2.1 Name Fully About us 6

2.2 Products and services Fully About us 6

2.3 Structure Fully About us 6

2.4 Location Fully Macquarie Park, Sydney

2.5 Countries Fully About us 6

2.6 Ownership Fully About us 6

2.7 Markets Fully About us 6

2.8 Scale FullyA Message from Paul O’Sullivan

Customers - Some stores have come home

67

2.9 Significant changes Fully Awards and recognition526

2.1 Awards received Fully About this Report 62

3.1 Reporting period Fully March 31 2013 3

3.2 Most recent previous report Fully Annual

3.3 Reporting cycle Fully Annual

3.4 Contact point Fully Optus 2014 Sustainability Report: About this Report 3

3.5 Defining report content FullyAbout this ReportStakeholder engagement What’s material matters

3910

3.6 Boundary of the report Fully About this Report 3

3.7 Specific limitations Fully About this Report 3

3.8 Basis for reporting Fully About this Report 3

3.9 Data measurement techniques Fully Where possible we have complied with the GRI Indicator protocols

3.1 Re-statements of information Fully No restatements

3.11 Significant changes Fully No significant changes

3.12 GRI Table Fully GRI Content Index 64

3.13 External assurance FullyOur Report is not externally assured

However we plan to explore this option in the future

4.1 Governance structure Fully SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Organisation Structure 44

4.2 Chair of the highest governance body Fully SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Board of Directors 39

4.3 Members of the highest governance body Fully SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Board of Directors 39

4.4 Mechanisms for recommendations to highest governance body Fully SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Investor Relations 70

4.5 Compensation for governance body Fully SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Corporate Governance 50

4.6 Conflicts of interest Fully SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Corporate Governance 50

4.7 Qualifications and expertise of the governance body Fully SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Corporate Governance 50

4.8 Statements of mission or values FullyLiving the Code of Conduct

SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Corporate Governance

1050

4.9 Overseeing economic, environmental, and social performance Fully

Governance: Our ultimate responsibility


Sustainability

8

50

80

4.10 Evaluation of governance body Fully SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Corporate Governance 50

4.11 Precautionary approach Fully

What’s material matters

A safe network


Risk Management Philosophy and Approach

10

21

50 72

4.12Externally developed economic, environmental, and social charters

Fully

About this ReportPrivacy, it’s a priorityAction on disabilityMuster up your old mobile SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Sustainability

3

26

26 56

80

4.13 Memberships in associations FullyStakeholder engagement

Environment - Muster up your old mobile

956

4.14 Stakeholder groups engaged Fully Stakeholder engagement 9

4.15 Identification and selection of stakeholders Fully Stakeholder engagement 9

4.16 Approaches to stakeholder engagement Fully Stakeholder engagement 9

4.17 Key topics and concerns Fully Stakeholder engagement 9

DMA EC Economic Management Approach Fully

About Us Vision and missionBusiness strategyFinancial results Community SingTel Annual Report: Business Review

667 7 2816

EC1 Direct economic value generated and distributed Fully About Us - Financial results 8

EC2 Financial implications of climate change PartiallyEnvironment - Shared goals for energy management Environment - Energy consumption

5555

EC3 Defined benefit plan obligations FullyOptus makes superannuation payments that comply with Australian law. These are based on defined benefit plans and the pensions liabilities are fully covered.

EC4 Financial assistance from government Fully There was no financial assistance received from government in the reporting period

EC5 Entry level wage Partially Optus complies with Australian law regarding minimum wages

EC6 Locally-based suppliers Partially Optus does not have a procurement policy explicitly preferring local suppliers

EC7 Local hiring PartiallyOptus does not have an employment practice that grants preference to those in the local community. All personnel are selected based on ability to perform the specific role.

EC8 Infrastructure investments and services FullyMarketplace - Innovation through infrastructure sharingCommunity - Share skills and solve problems

2238

GLOBAL REPORTING INITIATIVE – SUMMARY CONTENT INDEXWe’ve used the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines in the development of this report – at the self-assessed ‘A’ level. Next year we intend to transition to the GRI G4 Guidelines. Our full Index is online at www.optus.com.au/gri.


66GRI INDEX


EC9 Indirect economic impacts Partially

Marketplace - Yes, we’ve made a few changesMarketplace - A better network, More spectrumMarketplace - More greenfieldsMarketplace - Investment in the NBNCommunity - a strong history of giving backCommunity - More Yes through our community framework

162021 222929

DMA EN Environment Management Approach Fully Environment 52

EN1 Materials Partially Environment - Waste not want not 56

EN2 Percentage of materials used that are recycled PartiallyOptus currently does not use any packaging materials that contain a percentage of recycled content

EN3 Direct energy consumption Fully

Environment - Energised about energy

Environment - Key performance indicators

Environment - Energy consumption

54

57

55

EN4 Indirect energy Fully

Environment - Energised about energy

Environment - Key performance indicators


The majority of our energy remit is limited to internal consumption.

54

57

55

EN5 Energy saved due FullyEnvironment - Energised about energy

Website: EEO Report54

EN6Energy-efficient or renewable energy based products and services

Fully Environment - Energised about energy 54

EN7 Initiatives to reduce indirect energy consumption FullyEnvironment: Energised about energy

EEO Report54

EN8 Total water withdrawal Partially Environment - Every drop counts 54

EN9 Water sources significantly affected FullyOptus does not use water sources that would be significantly affected by the withdrawal of water

EN10 Percentage and total volume of water recycled Fully Environment - Every drop counts 56

EN11 Areas of high biodiversity value Partially Environment - Protecting Australia’s biodiversity 56

EN12 Significant impacts on biodiversity Fully

Our Environment - Protecting Australia’s biodiversity

Through detailed up-front environmental assessment, development of construction environmental management plans and the ongoing review and inspection of projects significant environmental impacts have been minimised

56

EN13 Habitats protected or restored Fully Environment - Protecting Australia’s biodiversity 56

EN14 Managing impacts on biodiversity FullyEnvironment - Protecting Australia’s biodiversity

Optus 2013 Sustainability Report: Protecting our environment

5631

EN15 IUCN Red List species Partially

Environment - Protecting Australia’s biodiversity

Optus 2013 Sustainability Report: Protecting our environment

We avoid construction in areas likely to encounter flora or fauna considered at risk. In unavoidable cases, we work with relevant authorities to ensure appropriate measures are in place. We also appoint specialist consultants with an environmental management plan and monitoring

5631

EN16 Greenhouse gas emissions FullyEnvironment - Energised about energy

Environment - Key Performance Indicators

5457

EN17 Indirect greenhouse gas emissions Partially Environment - Key Performance Indicators 57

EN18 Reduce greenhouse gas emissions Fully

Environment - Shared goals for energy management


Environment - Measuring what we manage

Environment - Our exchanges are pretty cool

Environment - Turning the lights off

Environment - Energy is looking a whole lot brighter

55

55

55

55

55

EN19 Emissions of ozone-depleting substances by weight Fully Optus does not emit material quantities of ozone depleting substances

EN20 NOx, SOx, and other significant air emissions FullyOptus does not generate significant quantities of NOX and SOX (ie we are below the thresholds for mandatory reporting required by the NPI). Refrigerant gas loss has also been estimated to be small.

EN21 Total water discharge FullyOptus operations and activities do not require extensive discharge of water. Main source for discharge is water used in bathrooms in our corporate offices. This water is discharged as part of the local sewage system.

EN22 Total weight of waste Partially Environment - Waste not want not 56

EN23 Significant spills Fully There were no significant spills

EN24 Hazardous waste Fully

Environment - Waste not want notEnvironment - Muster up your old mobileMobileMuster mobile phone collections are transported to licenced facilities for separation and resource recovery in Taiwan and Singapore. The only other Basel waste disposal were of industrial size batteries that were replaced and the failed batteries reprocessed in licenced facilities in Australia. We also reprocess our office electrical equipment.

56

56

EN25 Biodiversity value of water bodies Fully

No water bodies are significantly affected by Optus operations. The footprint of Optus’ activities and operations are generally small and do not significantly affect biodiversity value of water bodies and related habitats as a result of disturbances of water and runoff. The typical size of our operations is a trench less than half a metre wide. The Optus Environmental Management System provides a series of Action Plans for managing stormwater, de-watering of work sites, soil erosion and sediment control.

EN26Initiatives to mitigate environmental impacts of products and services

FullyEnvironment - Waste not want notEnvironment - Muster up your old mobileEnvironment - Searching for all ‘Bright Sparks’

56

56

57

EN27 Percentage of products sold and their packaging materials Partially Environment - Muster up your old mobile 56

EN28 Monetary value of significant fines FullyThere were no significant fines or non-monetary sanctions for non-compliance with environmental laws and regulation

EN29 Significant environmental impacts of transporting products Fully There have been no material transport losses in the reporting year

EN30 Total environmental protection expenditures Not Expenditures are not disclosed

DMA LA Labour Management Approach Fully People 42

LA1 Total workforce Fully People - KPI table 50

LA2 Total number and rate of employee turnover Fully People - KPI table 50

LA3 Benefits provided to full-time employees Fully Benefits are made available to all Optus employees

LA4 Collective bargaining agreements Fully People - KPI table 50

LA5 Minimum notice period(s) FullyThis is defined in our Employment Partnership Agreement and meets the requirements of Australian Law.

LA6 Formal joint management-worker health and safety committees FullyAcross the entire Optus workforce (100%), Optus utilises committees and other agreed consultation arrangements (as allowed by legislation) that help monitor and advise on occupational health and safety issues and programs.

LA7 Rates of injury PartiallyPeople - A safe workplacePeople - Duty of care to contractorsThere were no fatalities in the reporting period

4646


68GRI INDEX


LA8Education, training, counseling, prevention, and risk-control programs

Partially People - Support for our own people 47

LA9 Health and safety topics in formal agreements Fully

The Employment Partnership Agreement commits Optus to providing a working environment for its employees which is:

• free of harassment and unlawfuldiscrimination,

• which promotes equal opportunity

• which is smoke free,

• is both safe and healthy in accordance with relevant legislation.

LA10 Average hours of training Fully People - Learning and development hours 49

LA11 Programs for skills management and lifelong learning Fully

People - International opportunities to grow

People - Support for our own people

People - Difficult decisions

474748

LA12 Regular performance and career development reviews Fully 100% of Optus employees receive regular performance and career development reviews

LA13 Composition of governance bodies Partially

People - KPI Table

SingTel 2014 Annual Report: Board of Directors

Website: Optus Management

5039

LA14 Ratio of basic salary of men to women Partially People - KPI table 50

DMA HR Human Rights Management Approach Fully

Responsible supply chain

About us - Our Values

People

Optus 2013 Sustainability Report: Our People - Updating our EPA

Optus 2010 Sustainability Report: Key policies, codes and management systems

116

2013

HR1 Investment agreements that include human rights clauses Partially Responsible supply chain 11

HR2Suppliers and contractors that have undergone screening on human rights

Partially Responsible supply chain 11

HR3 Total hours of employee training on human rights Fully100% of employees have completed EEO@Optus as per our compliance requirements - approximately 5,500 hours of training

HR4 Total number of incidents of discrimination FullyPeople - KPI Table

There was one incident of alleged discrimination which was resolved50

HR5Operations where freedom of association and collective bargaining may be at significant risk

Fully


None of our Australian operations have been identified in which the right to exercise freedom of association and collective bargaining is at significant risk

Outsourced call centres in Asia go through our standard procurement process

11

HR6Operations identified as having significant risk for incidents of child labor

Fully


Optus is in compliance with Australian law which prohibits child labour


11

HR7 Risk for incidents of forced or compulsory labor Fully


None of our Australian operations have been identified in which the right to exercise freedom of association and collective bargaining is at significant risk


11

HR8 Security personnel trained in the organization's policies Fully


Security personnel are outsourced and go through our Procurement policy and process

This includes meeting state and territory licensing requirements and regulations

11

HR9 Violations involving rights of indigenous people Fully No incidents of violations involving rights of indigenous people

DMA SO Society Management Approach Fully

Living the Code of Conduct

Community

Optus 2010 Sustainability Report: Key policies, codes and management systems

Website: Public Policy

Regulatory

10

28

13

SO1 Impacts of operations on communities PartiallyMarketplace - More greenfields

Marketplace - A safe network

2121

SO2 Business units analyzed for risks related to corruption Fully Living the Code of Conduct 10

SO3 Employees trained in organization's anti-corruption policies Fully Living the Code of Conduct 10

SO4 Actions taken in response to incidents of corruption PartiallyLiving the Code of Conduct

No civil actions concluded10

SO5 Public policy positions Fully

Stakeholder engagementWebsite:Public PolicyRemaining aspects of this information are commercial in confidence

9

SO6 Financial and in-kind contributions to political parties Fully Website: Donor Annual Return

SO7 Legal actions for anti-competitive behavior Fully Optus 2014 Sustainability Report: Marketplace - Yes, there’s a difference 22

SO8 Fines for non-compliance with laws and regulations Fully Marketplace - We made a mistake, so we got it sorted 23

DMA PR Product Responsibility Management Approach Fully

Marketplace & Customers

Website: Regulatory

15

PR1Life cycle stages in which health and safety impacts of products and services are assessed

Fully

Marketplace - A safe network

Community - It’s a whole new digital world

Environment - Muster up your old mobile

213056

PR2 Non-compliance with regulations and voluntary codes Fully Marketplace - Yes, there's a difference 22

PR3 Product and service information required by procedures PartiallyWebsite: Regulatory

PR4Incidents of non-compliance with regulations and voluntary codes concerning product and service information and labeling

Fully Marketplace - Yes, there's a difference 22

PR5 Practices related to customer satisfaction Fully Marketplace - Honest customer feedback 25

PR6Laws, standards, and voluntary codes related to marketing communications

Fully

Marketplace - Privacy, it’s a priority

Marketplace - Yes, there’s a difference

Optus has compliance training and processes to review marketing communications in place to ensure compliance with all relevant legal obligations

2622

PR7Non-compliance with regulations and voluntary codes concerning marketing communications

Fully Marketplace - Yes, there’s a difference 22

PR8Substantiated complaints regarding breaches of customer privacy and losses of customer data

FullyWe had no substantiated breaches or losses of customer data. We did receive notices of investigation from the Privacy Commission and all were resolved in our favour

PR9Fines for non-compliance with laws and regulations concerning the provision and use of products and services

FullyThere were no significant fines for non-compliance with laws or regulations concerning the provision and use of products and services

VISIT OUR WEBSITEoptus.com.au/corporateresponsibility

FEEDBACK We welcome your feedback on our progress and our Sustainability Report.Please contact us at [email protected]

HEAD OFFICEOur head office is locate at 1 Lyonpark Road, Macquarie Park NSW 2113

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