Vodafone 2026 Annual Report

Vodafone Group Plc Annual Report 2026

Strategic report

Governance

Financials

Other information

Empowering People continued

In October 2025, South Africa, community wellbeing was strengthened through Early Childhood Development (ECD) nutrition and wellbeing education, delivered with the Vodacom Foundation. This supported caregivers to improve early years nutrition practices. In December 2025, Lesoto, employees and community members took part in the Minet Independence Marathon, Pink Walk for cancer awareness, and the 12 km Civil Military Corporate Challenge, collectively raising awareness of cancer prevention and healthy living. In September 2025, our VOIS Romania employees supported local social programmes through Brighter Futures volunteering, contributing time and expertise to community organisations. First aid and lifesaving skills training was delivered to employees in Luxembourg, Greece and VOIS India, VOIS Spain and VOIS Romania operations. Together, these initiatives demonstrate our commitment to extending safety, wellbeing, and public health benefits beyond the workforce, creating positive outcomes for families, educators, caregivers, and local communities across We will undertake an update of our SHW Policy, Standards and Risk Control Matrix to keep them aligned with the Group’s system of internal control, integrating enhancements designed to address material incident areas and strengthen operational risk controls. We will strengthen our existing supplier safety requirements, introducing more rigorous expectations, taking learnings from past incidents multiple regions. Looking forward and themes and stipulating clearer controls for those carrying out high‑risk activities across our suppliers in the value chain.

QR codes) have led to greater consistency of reporting of incidents, including lower‑severity injuries that may previously have gone unreported. There has been no material change to the underlying operational scope or risks. We continue to focus on encouraging near miss and unsafe acts or observation reporting, and learning from these cases to prevent more serious incidents through a focus on continuous improvement in safety outcomes for both our employees and contractors and in particular those working in our value chain. All incidents relating to key risks or breaches of the Vodafone Absolute Rules that are reported are investigated. We ensure that incidents are investigated in accordance with their severity, and appropriate remedial actions and improvements are identified and implemented. We strongly believe in the importance of prevention and we also believe that every incident should be treated as an opportunity for learning and improvement. We continue to include a Health and Safety module as part of our mandatory Doing What’s Right training. All employees are required to complete the training within six weeks of joining and then follow our learning cycle. At the end of the year, 98% of employees required to complete the Health and Safety module in the reporting period had done so. Click to read more about our Code of Conduct on page 44 We continue to mandate our ‘Leading for Health & Safety at Work’ e-learning module. This module sets out the specific impact we expect our leaders to have. Each local market is also responsible for delivering training that supports the development of appropriate leadership skills, behaviours, and identification of risks. Additional training is specific to an individual’s role and aligned to each market’s local legislation.

Value chain engagement – Most of our high-risk work and most of the significant incidents we report are as a result of work carried out by suppliers on our behalf. Engagement and collaboration is essential to achieve our common goal of no one gets hurt. This year we held quarterly in-person safety forums with our larger global suppliers in Romania, South Africa, Germany and Luxembourg. We celebrated together over a decade of collaboration to develop common ways of working and share best practice to improve workplace safety. In Egypt, our Vodacom operation also held an in-person forum bringing together partners from the African continent. Community engagement – Across our markets, we continued to invest in initiatives that deliver tangible benefits to the communities we serve, with a focus on safety, public health, and social wellbeing. In September 2025, our VOIS India operation, teams delivered Basic Life Safety (BLS) training for external school teachers alongside dengue fever awareness, monsoon safety information, and defensive driving sessions for VOIS taxi drivers. These activities enhanced emergency readiness and seasonal risk awareness among groups outside the organisation, supporting wider community safety. In December 2025, Mozambique, public health formed a core part of community engagement. The team led a Cervical and Breast Cancer awareness campaign targeting extended family members of employees, helping improve understanding of early detection in a setting where preventive screening is limited. This was complemented by on site psychological consultations and mental health webinars open to wider community facing groups, aimed at reducing stigma and increasing access to support. Employees also donated essential goods to Maputo Central Hospital supporting frontline care where demand routinely exceeds resources.

It is therefore with great regret that we record two fatal accident this year, without prejudice to any external investigations, that resulted in the deaths of two people. In Romania, on the 5th May 2025, a worker working for a supplier in our value chain was killed falling from a platform at height whilst working on behalf of Vodafone during the installation and removal of street lighting fixtures as part of a public modernisation project. In the UK, on the 15th May 2025, there was a fatal road traffic accident involving a vehicle that was being driven by a Vodafone field engineer (employee) that sadly struck and killed a cyclist (a member of the public). We have shared the learnings from this incident across the business to aim to prevent recurrence. An incident resulting in a serious injury occurred this year in connection with a supplier undertaking network upgrade works on behalf of VodafoneThree in the UK. The incident, which involved the use of a Mobile Elevated Work Platform (MEWP), has been reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and remains under investigation. At the time of writing, the HSE has not requested information or engagement and VodafoneThree will support the HSE if and when required to do so and has initiated an internal review in line with its governance processes. LTI is the term we use when a work-related injury or illness results in one or more days away from work. During the year, 33 employee and contractor LTIs were reported. In total these incidents account for 626 lost workdays. Employee and contractor work-related injuries and associated lost time days increased during the year with approximately 75% attributable to slips/trips and falls and manual handling incidents which are as a result of improved reporting awareness, rather than a deterioration in safety performance. Training, leadership messaging, and improved channels to report (such as the ability to report via