Juniper Networks recently published our annual voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report. There’s nothing remarkable or new about us doing that, to be frank. But what is remarkable is the subtle change in emphasis this year. Don’t misunderstand me, I have worked for Juniper for numerous years and the company has always taken our CSR activity and reporting very seriously. The subtle change lies in how much more closely our business and our CSR strategies have become intertwined and interdependent. As the 2022 report says, CSR must be a fundamental driver for a responsible organization’s strategic focus and core operations.
Juniper builds our CSR strategy around three distinct yet complementary pillars: Enhance Trust & Governance; Enable the Workforce of the Future; Build Global Resilience. Together, these create a powerful framework for Juniper’s culture, purpose and values—shaping our day-to-day business and our role as a global corporate citizen. I want to share a few key thoughts around each pillar, to illustrate how they fit together and how they are shaping our future direction as a technology company.
Enhance Trust & Governance
We believe that Juniper’s stakeholder audience becomes broader each year. Therefore, we must ensure that our core integrity permeates every aspect of our operations and our dealings with customers, partners, suppliers, employees, shareholders and influencers. And, of course, this must be more than “just” words; Juniper’s actions are what builds trust in the minds of our stakeholders. Our reputation for trust is what helps us attract better talent.
Enable the Workforce of the Future
For me—and our executive team—Juniper’s people are our most valuable and valued asset. We all know talent is paramount. We know that a diverse, inclusive workforce is the most effective because it creates the richest collective mindset to work with our customers and help solve their challenges. These challenges include some of the biggest, most intractable problems facing us all.
Global Resilience and Sustainability
Climate change can be the root of many global problems and natural disasters. That is why we, in common with other organizations, must strive to minimize our impact on the environment. It’s not just about our sustainable design and the innovation of our products and solutions; we want to do more. We can respond to natural disasters by providing practical help, financially and through our workforce. We can help with digital connectivity (for example, the work we did throughout the pandemic to support many COVID testing facilities with free Wi-Fi). And our technology can help to advance climate solutions in the hands of our many customers in the higher education, government and research sectors.
The Sustainable Business Journey
Our CEO, Rami Rahim, announced our pledge to be carbon neutral by 2025 back in January 2022. This is of course a major undertaking as the foundation of our ongoing strategy. To achieve this goal we are exploring further energy efficiency measures and renewable energy procurement so that we can meaningfully contribute to the fight against climate change. Juniper’s actions and behaviors as a company, for example, working with supply chains, improving packaging and focusing on resource consumption in our facilities, are key elements of our ongoing sustainability progress. For example, in 2021 we shut down an energy-inefficient building on our Sunnyvale campus, consolidating its operations into more modern, efficient facilities.
As mentioned, the innovative solutions that we design and build for our customers can further contribute to reduced power, space and cooling consumption within their operations. The lifecycles of many of these platforms are also extending significantly as a result of our ongoing innovation, minimizing ‘rip and replace’ programs to prevent waste. In short, we regard sustainable networking as an imperative for the entire IT industry.
Through our customers, Juniper’s technology underpins research into and enables practical mitigation of a huge range of industrial, medical, transportation, construction, educational and scientific challenges that threaten people, communities, cities and the planet. For me, this is the ultimate inflection point of our CSR strategy with our business operations.
Juniper’s mission to power connections and empower change has never been more relevant.
