28 April 2022IR blog

Q1 2022 ESG presentation materials

VK Company Limited (LSE, MOEX: VKCO, hereinafter referred as “VK” or “the Company”) is pleased to announce the publication of its quarterly ESG presentation with various aspects of Sustainable development across the Company, its business units as well as partner/JV assets. Presentation with highlights from Q1 2022 is available here.

Some of the key 1Q 2022 highlights within the ESG area included the following:

E (Environmental):

We launched HR Electronic Document Management System, with >3,000 employees joining already in Q1
VK projects joined the "Earth Hour"
Skillbox launched an educational course called "Climate and us: How to help the Planet" for the annual Earth Hour campaign. The program is dedicated to climate change, green technologies and environmental literacy
Citydrive added 3 Tesla Model 3 Long Range electric cars to its Moscow fleet
BIT.GAMES studio supported the local eco community ECOVES and helped clean up the territory around the Sursk reservoir in the Penza region. As a result, the team of volunteers cleaned the territory of 82m³ and sent the collectibles for recycling
Delivery Club updated its app so that no cutlery is offered as a default option. The Co also started to demonstrate a reminder with the rules about recycling its customers and launched electronic document management internally in order to reduce paper usage

S (Social):

In Q1 2022, 42 training events were organized for employees, attended by 812 employees
VK launched an internship program 2022 for university students and graduates. The program includes 30 IT areas, including development, analytics, testing, and information security. >7,000 students applied for a summer paid internship at VK
Skillbox provided free access to the course on handling the anxiety for everyone who faced emotional stress. The course registered >21,000 visits
MY.GAMES hosted The Big Deal PRO Art event - a free educational summit aimed at development of the local gaming community and educating young professionals
VK launched events that aim to develop skills of resilience, emotion management and self-regulation
Marusia and Skillbox teams developed a skill for user’s self-reflection
As part of the quarterly activity, we held Donor Days for VK employees at Moscow and St Petersburg offices
In March, we received a record number of potential new hire recommendations from employees — 755 or almost 4x more than a year ago
VK Jobs and Dobro Mail.ru launched a project to support employment needs of people with rare diseases
Delivery Club couriers started to help "Lisa Alert" to search for missing people
AliExpress Russia launched a clothing brand for people with the Down syndrome
Dobro Mail.ru and Citydrive presented the female driver support project
VKontakte provided RUB 5mn in advertising support to 106 charitable projects as a part of its grant program for Non-profit organiations (NPOs)
OK opened a grant program to support NPOs and charitable foundations. On a quarterly basis, the OK will select 15 funds and add RUB 15,000 to their accounts in the OK ad manager
During 16-24 February Samokat users were able to buy hygiene products in the app’s Beauty tab, which were delivered to charitable organization Nochlezhka, where homeless people were able to get them for free. During the campaign users donated >300 hygiene products

G(Governance):

In Q1 2022 and April VK had a number of changes to the Board of Directors and the management team. The Board was enhanced with additions of a number of Scientific Community Members, along with appointments of a number of senior leaders in areas such as AI, Information Security, Investments and Business Development, Marketing and others within the management team
We added a new position of a dedicated ESG Manager as a reflection of our ongoing focus on the sustainable development agenda
We established a working group on sustainable development, which consists of all the key internal ESG stakeholders
We conducted a survey on material topics, that covered the key stakeholders as a part of our efforts in preparation of our upcoming annual ESG Report
We launched the Security Management Center in the VK ID personal account
Rewards for discovered bugs have been increased by 20-50% as part of the relaunched Bug Bounty program. Depending on the level of threat, payments can range from $500 to $20,000
VKontakte made a 2-step verification mandatory for administrators of communities with over 10,000 followers.
OK launched a neural network-based technology to combat aggressive statements and inciting of a discord in public comments.
VK signed an updated version of the anti-piracy memorandum