Social and Relationship Capital

Social and Relationship Capital

We are committed to engaging in corporate responsibility and sustainability initiatives that support our communities and help us develop trusted relationships with our stakeholders. Proactive engagement with our stakeholders and investments in social impact initiatives, including those aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, advance our position as a leading corporate citizen and create shared value for Intel, our global supply chain, and our communities.

Economic and Social. The health of our business and local economies depends on continued investments in innovation. We provide high- skill, high-paying jobs around the world. Many of these are manufacturing and R&D jobs located in our own domestic and international factories. We also benefit economies through our R&D ecosystem spending, sourcing activities, consumer spending by our employees, and tax payments. We make sizable capital investments and provide leadership in public-private partnerships to spur economic growth and innovation.

We stand at the forefront of new technologies that are increasingly being used to empower individuals, companies, and governments around the world to solve major societal challenges. We also aim to empower people through education and advance social initiatives to create career pathways into the technology industry. This has included our global Intel AI for Youth program, scaled in partnership with governments and institutions to empower youth with digital readiness and AI skills, as well as our multi-year partnerships with historically black colleges and universities in the U.S. aimed at increasing the number of African Americans who pursue electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science fields. Our employees and retirees actively share their expertise through volunteer initiatives in the communities where we operate. These efforts contributed more than 10 million hours of service over the past decade, and our new goals include a commitment to volunteer an additional 10 million hours by 2030. In 2020, we volunteered 910 thousand hours. COVID-19 presented challenges for in-person volunteering, resulting in lower reported volunteer hours compared to prior years. However, we saw an outpouring of support from employees for virtual volunteering, donations, and innovative technology projects to support our communities. In April, we announced the Pandemic Response Technology Initiative, a commitment of $50 million to combat COVID-19. Our focus is to leverage our technology, expertise, resources, and our global ecosystem, to accelerate access to technology that can combat the current pandemic and get ahead of future pandemics through scientific discovery, enable remote learning for students, and aid in economic recovery. To date, we have partnered with many organizations on numerous projects across sectors, including technology, healthcare, education, industrial, retail, transportation, and academia.

Human Rights Commitment. We are committed to maintaining and improving processes to avoid human rights violations related to our operations, supply chain, and products. We have established an integrated approach to managing human rights across our business, including board-level oversight and the involvement of senior-level Management Review Committees. We also meet throughout the year with external stakeholders and experts on human rights to continue to inform and evolve our human rights policies and oversight processes. While we do not always know nor can we control what products our customers create or the applications end users may develop, we do not tolerate our products being used to violate human rights. Where we become aware of a concern that Intel products are being used by a business partner in connection with abuses of human rights, we restrict or cease business with the third party until we have high confidence that Intel's products are not being used to violate human rights. As a result, in 2020 we restricted certain sales based on our Human Rights Principles that would have otherwise been considered lawful.


Supply Chain Responsiblility

We actively manage our supply chain to help reduce risk, improve product quality, achieve environmental and social goals, and improve overall performance and value creation for Intel, our customers, and our suppliers. To drive responsible and sustainable practices throughout our supply chain, we have robust programs to educate and engage suppliers that support our global manufacturing operations. We actively collaborate with other companies and lead industry initiatives on key issues such as improving transparency around climate and water impacts in the global electronics supply chain and, as part of our RISE strategy, we will advance collaboration across our industry on responsible minerals sourcing.

Over the past decade, we have directly engaged with our suppliers to verify compliance and build capacity to address risks of forced and bonded labor and other human rights issues. We perform supplier audits and identify critical direct suppliers to engage through capability- building programs, which help suppliers build sustainability acumen and verify compliance with the Responsible Business Alliance and our Code of Conduct. The suppliers covered by these audits represent 78% of cash payments made to managed suppliers. We also engage with indirect suppliers through our programs on forced and bonded labor, responsible minerals, and supplier diversity. Although COVID-19 presented travel and safety challenges in 2020 that impacted our ability to complete as many in-person supplier audits as in the previous year, we continued to engage with our suppliers and communicate our expectations and requirements. To achieve our 2030 goals, we will significantly expand the number of suppliers covered by our engagement activities to deepen accountability for human rights.

Our commitment to diversity and inclusion also extends to our suppliers. We believe a diverse supply chain supports greater innovation and value for our business. We achieved our 2020 goal to reach $1 billion in annual spending with diverse-owned suppliers and our new 2030 goals include doubling this figure over the next decade. Beginning in 2021, we will not retain or use outside law firms in the U.S. that are average or below average on diversity for their equity partners. We are applying a similar rule to firms used by our tax department, including non-legal firms.