FAQ

To derive 12 sustainability streams, we challenged ourselves with three key tasks: we systematized all sustainability-related initiatives and projects across Yandex and mapped them against the UN SDGs, analyzed best practices as well as current and anticipated sustainability challenges relevant to the IT industry, and engaged our stakeholders to learn what they find important and expect of Yandex. There were nearly 2,000 people surveyed and interviewed, including employees and top managers, business partners and suppliers, investors and shareholders.

As a result, we identified Yandex’s areas of expertise that have the potential to strengthen our performance and drive positive change responding to local needs, as well as to address gaps that needed to be filled with actions. These opportunities underpinned the agenda.

Given the nature of our business and its underlying mission, which is to leverage technology and innovation to improve daily lives and address social challenges, we view all our product development costs (disclosed in annual reports that can be accessed here) as sustainability-related and R&D spending. Similarly, we consider close to Yandex’s total revenue to come from social impact activities.

Here is a few examples why:

Yandex values diversity and welcomes everybody who demonstrates exceptional professionalism. Diversity is supported through our long-time investment in creating equal opportunities, which is a strategic focus overseen by the Group’s HR Director.

Our hiring process is centered on evaluating candidate’s relevant skills and knowledge only, meaning that different people of different backgrounds have an equal chance to land a position. Relocation support provided to successful candidates is one of the mechanisms that contributes to maintaining decent representation of specialists with diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds.

We also acknowledge that diversity and gender equality are social challenges that need to be addressed holistically, and that gender disbalance within the company often reflects general social trends. For instance, as of 2018-2019, women made up less than a third of students enrolling in technical degree programs in Russia (the share is similar for 2022), resulting in the IT job market of 2022-2023 remaining male-dominated. Consequently, as opposed to targeted recruitment that serves the equality of outcome, we choose to think long term and invest in early awareness building and IT education for all, thereby encouraging more female students to pursue technical majors and then careers in IT. Visit Education for All webpage to learn more.

HR Department monitors the share of underrepresented groups in Yandex’s workforce and regularly benchmarks the results against the peer group. So far, and thanks to our substantial investment in opportunity creation, the share of women in the workforce has been on par with – and even slightly ahead of – the industry. According to a study (Deloitte, 2021), average female representation in large technology firms was expected to reach 33% in 2022, which is lower than the 35% of women in overall workforce that we report in 2022. The number of women in STEM roles in Yandex reached 24.3%, quite similar to an average of 26.7% of women in STEM roles on the markets served by IT giants. Access our latest Sustainability Report for workforce diversity figures.

We employ top talent that values self-development and thrives in challenging environments, which is why our primary focus is on supporting professional growth and providing the freedom to innovate and experiment.

As a highly diversified business, Yandex offers opportunities to work with different business models and encourages the development and scaling of employees' own business ideas (through our bets and experiments program). Noteworthy, our employee performance appraisal system is tuned to evaluate the level of effort, commitment and critical thinking just as much as it evaluates the achievement of relevant KPIs. This approach helps prevent situations where an unsuccessful project directly affects performance reviews. We understand that not all ideas will pan out, but we recognize the effort invested.

We also believe that employee well-being, both physical and mental, is essential for high levels of engagement. Alongside competitive compensation, Yandex provides a wide range of employee benefits, including but not limited to access to an extended list of healthcare services through private medical insurance, assistance with home buying, free sports, food allowances, and much more.

Visit Yandex Employees webpage to learn more.

All Yandex employees are required to comply with the Code of Business Ethics and Conduct, which prohibits any forms of discrimination, sets out the principles of equality, mutual respect and ethical business conduct. All employees must complete training in ethics, and are encouraged to report any observed violations. Yandex administers a confidential hotline for anonymous and non-anonymous grievance reports that is open to employees as well as parties outside of Yandex. We take each report seriously. All reports get reviewed by a designated panel that includes members of Yandex’s ethics committee.

Yandex’s Code of Business Ethics and Conduct stipulates that Yandex respects employees’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. There is no standalone policy.

Yandex has a designated Information Security Department that provides oversight of cybersecurity issues and is responsible for ensuring compliance with applicable legislation and international standards, running vulnerability testing and monitoring risks, detecting and investigating incidents.

Data privacy issues are overseen at the executive level, by the Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) who serves as an intermediary between the Information Security Department and Yandex services that handle personal data. The CPO is tasked with ensuring that user data is protected across all operations including data exchange between Yandex services, data exchange with partners and other instances.

We focus on preventive actions and have introduced a set of measures to detect and address vulnerabilities before they can pose a risk. Our team of information security specialists regularly monitors systems performance and conducts vulnerability testing to identify those that can be exploited by attacks. We also value external input and engage third parties to detect vulnerabilities through our Bug Bounty program. We regularly upgrade our cybersecurity systems and procedures to ensure they meet the most rigorous standards. Yandex services that deal with the handling, processing and storing of user data are certified to ISO 27001 and are SOC 2-compliant. Moreover, we invest in proper training: all our employees are required to complete cybersecurity and privacy training that introduces them to key responsibilities regarding data protection and teaches to identify, manage and respond to threats.

As for risk mitigation, Yandex has an Information Security Incident Management Policy that outlines specific actions to be taken in case of an incident. We have introduced a Security Operations Center (a part of the Information Security Department) that is in charge of responding to an incident: conducting internal investigations, taking corrective actions and validating them through independent audits. If the incident compromises user data, we commit to informing all affected users.

Visit Information Security & Data Privacy webpage to learn more

Yandex services that deal with the handling, processing and storing of user data undergo regular third-party audits, are certified to ISO 27001 and are SOC 2-compliant. Yandex Cloud has additional certifications that set standards for the use of cloud services, namely, ISO/IEC 27017, ISO/IEC 27018 and ISO/IEC 27701. Yandex Cloud became the first public cloud platform in Russia and the CIS region to build its security systems in compliance with these standards. For the full list of information security certificates held by Yandex services, visit Information Security & Data Privacy webpage.

As a company that sees its mission to provide digital products that help people better navigate the online and offline world, we collect personal data to offer highly personalized services that cater to each individual user. As stated in our Privacy Policy, such data include the information users provide when creating a Yandex account (name, phone number, address etc.); electronic data such as IP address, cookies, network and device information; information about user activities while using our services, e.g., search history, likes and dislikes, purchases; geolocation information (to tailor location-specific services). The information is collected for a specific purpose only as stated in the Section 5 of the Privacy Policy. We do not intentionally collect any sensitive personal data such as racial origins or political opinions.

Yandex users can access an advanced data management tool in their Yandex ID accounts, which enables them to request a full copy of data collected about them by all major Yandex services, and delete personal data. Most of the data is removed from our services within 24 hours upon the receipt of the user request. If the request concerns information that is legally required to be stored for a certain period of time, we stop processing such data immediately and remove it as soon as the specified period elapses.

User rights with regard to personal data management are outlined in our Privacy Policy.

As of now, we do not have a formalized climate strategy. However, environmental & climate issues constitute priority streams of our sustainability agenda, and the commitment is there. Although we do not expect to announce targets in the following 12-24 months due to an unprecedented ambiguity in the market that occurred after February 2022, we will keep investing in a comprehensive assessment of our performance, which we believe to be an important milestone that will guide our future actions.

Visit Carbon Footprint webpage for more details on what we already measure.

When evaluating our carbon performance, we look at such metric as carbon intensity versus gross GHG emissions, and find it the most helpful to track the progress over time. With the ultimate goal to achieve a stably declining carbon intensity trend, we focus on the following:

Carbon intensity figures are provided on Carbon Footprint webpage and in our Sustainability Report.

It has always been Yandex’s top priority to ensure best-in-class efficiency of our infrastructure, which is why Yandex invests in embedding the latest innovations at the stage of facility construction (including own inventions), and carries out regular upgrades to tune systems to meet the most advanced standards. For years, energy efficiency of Yandex’s data centers has already been maintained at levels that surpassed average performance of a typical data center during the same period. In 2022, average power usage effectiveness (PUE) of all our facilities equaled 1.25 versus global average of 1.55 (Uptime Institute, 2022), while Yandex’s data centers that had been in operation for withing the last 10 years demonstrate world’s leading PUE of 1.15. We provide more figures on Energy Efficiency webpage.

Moving forward, we aim to keep applying the most advanced techniques to every aspect of our data center energy management systems, spanning power and heat usage, heat recovery and recycling, server cooling. Our data centers already employ free cooling systems and heat recovery technologies.

Moreover, we will continue focusing on energy-efficient and low-power design of our servers. The hardware that is currently in operation has been manufactured to meet Yandex’s efficiency requirements. For instance, Yandex’s supercomputers, which can execute up to 3,500 tasks simultaneously and have made the list of the world's 50 most powerful supercomputers, require 1.5–2x less energy to do the same job as a computer with conventional architecture.

There are two key areas of action within our own operations. One focuses on optimizing material usage and reducing excess packaging, while the other emphasizes circularity and the use of recycled, reused, and recyclable materials. We are committed to engaging with our partners and users to collectively drive sustainable change.

Yandex Market implements the fit-to-size rule in its packaging operations. The service analyzes the assortment, determines suitable packaging dimensions, and regularly updates packing guidelines to strike a balance between resource efficiency and product preservation. Some orders are delivered in recyclable courier envelopes, providing secure and snug packaging. For certain categories of items where damage prevention is necessary, cushioning and additional sealing may be used, while products with inherently protective packaging no longer require additional wrapping. In 2022, packaging optimization measures helped save over 1,600 metric tons of cardboard and paper filler, while halving packaging costs per order despite a doubling of monthly orders.

In line with the commitment outlined in Yandex’s Code of Business Ethics and Conduct, we prioritize the use of secondary raw materials and materials that can be reused or recycled whenever possible. All delivery boxes used by Yandex Market are made of certified recycled cardboard, and the courier envelopes contain 30% recycled plastic. Yandex Lavka, our e-grocery service, has opted for recyclable HDPE delivery bags following an environmental life-cycle assessment that considered the recyclability of various materials in the regions where Yandex Lavka operates. The service also provides packaging recommendations for suppliers and strives to ensure that packaging for its private label goods is recyclable.

Moreover, all our delivery services encourage users to manage waste responsibly. We have developed recycling guidelines (RU) for different types of packaging, integrated a layer on Yandex Maps that displays over 24,000 verified recyclable waste collection points, and incorporated eco-friendly features, such as utensils opt-out, into our user apps. We also conduct user surveys to gain insights into their eco-friendly habits, which inform our product development efforts.

Visit Packaging & Waste webpage to learn more.

Yandex commits to upholding human rights in an online space, and welcomes everybody to report any issues related to freedom of expression online using our confidential grievance hotline. Each report is assigned a tracking number, and a reporter gets notified regarding the status and the outcome of the review.

Visit Quality Content webpage to learn more about how Yandex works with content.

No. Yandex advertising services do not place political ads.

Health-related information is an example of such content. Our search algorithms are attuned to display information from sources verified by healthcare experts. Yandex partners with a network of professional assessors who review medical information, check authors of publications for reliability, and validate that the website belongs to an accredited medical organization.

For any self-harm and violence-related queries, our search index displays self-help advice pages and snippets with support hotlines, while potentially harmful resources are automatically blocked.

Yandex blocks content that violates applicable laws as well as our content requirements. A comprehensive set of rules has been developed and published for search content, ad content (including standalone requirements for placing nonprofit ads).

We disclose the number of links removed from the search results as a matter of response to legally binding requests of Roskomnadzor, Russia’s mass media monitoring authority, in our Transparency Report. All users who search for content that was removed due to legal restrictions see a message explaining the grounds for content removal.

We value feedback and use it to improve the quality of our services, where quality equals high ethical standards. Users are welcome to report content violations, and can do so following the grievance procedure.

Content placed on Yandex resources that violates content rules is deleted immediately upon receiving a complaint. If the content is deemed controversial and there is uncertainty about whether it violates any rules, Yandex blocks it and notifies the uploader. The uploader has the option to either delete the material or dispute the complaint by submitting a counter-statement explaining why they believe the content does not infringe on any rights. The uploader and the party reporting the violation are then connected to settle the issue, and Yandex either unblocks or deletes the material based on the resolution provided by the parties involved. If no action is taken by the uploader, blocked materials are automatically deleted.

Service partner social guarantees and wellbeing initiative span a variety of support schemes, benefits and rewards.

Yandex was the first company in Russia and Central Asia to introduce a medical insurance scheme (RU) for partner drivers and couriers. In the event of illness or accident, Yandex’s insurance partners compensate the service partner (similar to sick pay) at a rate established for the particular region. Additionally, the lives and health of all drivers and couriers are insured for up to RUB 2 million while they are fulfilling orders.

To ensure that drivers and couriers receive proper rest, our system restricts access to new orders after 12 consecutive hours of activity in a service. We also organize resting zones in restaurants where couriers can enjoy complimentary tea or have discounted meals.

For the full list of initiatives, refer to our Sustainability Report and check cases on Yandex Service Partners webpage.

We prioritize the physical safety of our service partners. We have implemented various measures to mitigate factors that can contribute to road accidents, including:

And some others, which you can learn about on Yandex Service Partners webpage or by accessing our Sustainability Report.