Yandex publishes today its annual Sustainability Progress Report covering the company’s environmental, social and corporate governance results in 2021 and outlining key accomplishments within each of the sustainability priority areas.
Yandex presented its full sustainability agenda in 2020. A number of streams, for example, cybersecurity, the quality of services and employee wellbeing, are closely aligned with business strategy and have well-established management systems. There are also a few streams that focus on future opportunities, such as those of decarbonization and balancing the economic interests of our business with social needs of our service partners.
In 2021, we focused on scaling accessible and high-quality educational opportunities in IT as well as enhancing social support schemes for drivers and couriers partnering with our services. We also took important steps to advance our environmental agenda: in addition to maintaining the high level of energy efficiency of our infrastructure, we implemented measures to better monitor the carbon footprint to pave the way for decarbonization, as well as improved packaging & waste management practices within our delivery segments.
Highlighted sustainability results of 2021:
Education
- Over 6.3 million have benefitted from Yandex’s free educational programs in the 2020-2021 academic year.
- 78% students of Practicum by Yandex aiming at a new profession got a job in their chosen field, 92% of whom got employed within six months of graduating.
Service partners
- Yandex launched a medical insurance scheme under which eligible drivers and couriers are compensated in the event of illness or an incident (similarly to sick leave). The program is financed by Yandex or jointly with the service partner, and is available across Russia.
Information security & data privacy
- Maintained state-of-the-art information security systems validated by international certifications, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018 and SOC 2 among those.
- Introduced an advanced personal data management tool allowing users to retrieve a full copy of personal information collected by 70+ services and request its erasure.
Employees
- The number of people who worked at Yandex during 2021 grew 35% to 21,151. In 2021, Yandex hired 8,858 new employees, almost 2.5 times more than in 2020.
- By the end of 2021, 23.3% of employees in STEM roles were women. This is 0.3% above the average levels in global IT-companies.
- Women and men in like-for-like roles and with similar performance results are compensated equally. The gender pay gap does not exceed 2%.
Environmental responsibility
- Yandex’s infrastructure remains highly energy efficient: in 2021, our server equipment used four times less overhead energy compared with the global average.
- In 2021, Yandex became one of a few international companies who assessed the carbon footprint of taxi rides and e-commerce deliveries. The calculations were performed for Yandex Taxi and Yandex Market services.
- Between 2017 and 2021, Yandex Taxi achieved a 17% reduction in GHG emissions per 1 passenger kilometer as a result of improved efficiency of the platform and order allocation algorithms.
- The One-Click delivery model that was first introduced by Yandex Market in the fall of 2020 (on-demand delivery of a parcel from nearby Yandex Lavka dark store) has proven to be 13% more environmentally friendly than a standard delivery model. The decrease in carbon intensity is the result of the last-leg optimization, including the replacement of deliveries by vehicles with delivery on foot or by bike.
We made significant progress in 2021. We succeeded in scaling educational and community support projects, maintained the high level of energy efficiency of our infrastructure, and better managed our carbon footprint. We continued to provide equal opportunities and fair compensation to our employees, and showed strong diversity figures – for example, female representation in STEM-roles at Yandex is on par with global IT leaders. The usefulness, safety and quality of the digital products we offer also remained a priority as we worked to make them more accessible. In 2022, our core sustainability objectives remain unchanged, albeit adapted to the changing market environment. We will aim to achieve maximum impact while staying transparent about our progress.” — John Boynton, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Yandex Group
The report is prepared in accordance with GRI Standards and SASB guidelines and is available in English and Russian. Yandex will continue to issue sustainability progress reports annually, with key sustainability updates to be shared on our new sustainability webpage.
