Wirtualna Polska Holding S.A. has adopted the Sustainable Development Strategy for 2022-2025. The document describes three key areas of activity - environment, society and corporate governance - in which the company will carry out the defined tasks. The top goals include media independence, green energy, climate education, diversity, and cybersecurity. The strategy also includes long-term assumptions, with the implementation horizon up to 2030.
The new directions of development are Wirtualna Polska's response to environmental, social and governance challenges. All three areas are assigned specific and fully measurable actions.
Over the past two years, the company focused on environmental goals and its "green" transformation, which will enter the next level from 2023 - by that time all of Wirtualna Polska's data centers will be zero-emission. In addition, the company plans to implement circular economy rules for IT hardware, reduce water consumption in office buildings and support biodiversity. The next ambitions in the announced strategy are to minimize online "hate" and ensure the highest standards of user safety online. WP has also addressed key projects ensuring employee welfare, equal pay and diversity in teams.
"Drafting the sustainable development strategy we wanted to emphasize the culture of the organization being developed by Wirtualna Polska. We have selected goals that are closest to the business and our place in the market and that our stakeholders, especially employees, care about. The independence of the media, climate protection or strengthening the role of women in business and public debate are of utmost importance to us. That's why the strategy systematizes what we are already doing and defines specific goals for the future," says Elżbieta Bujniewicz-Belka, CFO of Wirtualna Polska Holding S.A.
Pillars of Wirtualna Polska’s Sustainable Development Strategy
Positive impact on climate and environment. The activities planned under this pillar include reduction of greenhouse gases emitted by the company, protection of biodiversity and environmental education. The achievement of the goals is to ensure that WP’s business will be "green". Since 2020, the company has been implementing measures that bring it closer to achieving zero emissions by 2023. Since the beginning of 2021, the energy purchased by the company has been covered by guarantees of origin from renewable sources.
In addition, users of the WP Home Page and over 20 services owned by Wirtualna Polska may switch to dark mode. It enables, among other benefits, lower energy consumption in devices that use OLED displays, such as mobile phones.
Independence, journalistic ethics, network security. In this pillar the company will carry out projects aimed primarily at the users of WP services and products. A number of them pertain to education on safe use of the Internet and fight against digital exclusion, which is a growing challenge in Poland. In response to new threats, Wirtualna Polska will ensure the highest standard of security of its services and support the users in safe use of the Internet. There are also plans to protect against "hate" by promoting comments from logged-in and credible users and to educate users on how to respond to this phenomenon.
In times of increased disinformation activities, Wirtualna Polska also adds the fight against "fake news" to its list of most urgent priorities, which, especially in social media, is perceived as one of the main digital threats to democracy, journalism and freedom of speech. The effective fight against fake news is deeply rooted in Wirtualna Polska’s business model, which is based on providing reliable information and ethical advertising. The goal for the near future will be to provide users with a guarantee that the texts they read on WP services contain exclusively verified facts.
Highest standards of management and supervision WP puts a strong emphasis on corporate and governance projects in its strategy. As part of the efforts in this pillar, the Group will launch new programs and training related to ethics and compliance for its employees and adopt a diversity policy. In addition, it undertakes to provide annual reporting on the implementation of the 10 goals of the UN Global Compact, as well as ongoing update of the newly developed sustainability website - https://holding.wp.pl/en/sustainable-development.
The ESG strategy adopted by Wirtualna Polska Holding systematizes its previous activities but also sets new directions of development and measurable goals for the future.