Deepen your insights into supplier sustainability practices to fortify your procurement processes and drive more robust sustainability strategies.
Share this Practice on:LinkedIn
Evaluate suppliers to ensure they align with your sustainability ambitions, making use of data, engaging in dialogue and collaborating with peers to support broader standards shifts.
Kick off your supplier assessment by exploring publicly available data such as supplier websites, sustainability reports, and databases like CDP, SEDEX or EcoVadis. Review supplier documentation like sustainability policies, CSR reports, and self-assessment questionnaires. These documents can reveal a supplier's commitment to sustainability and their efforts to uphold it.
Consider conducting investigations for a deeper insight into suppliers’ sustainability efforts, employing site visits, interviews, or audits. Fostering an open environment is important, rewarding transparency and trust-building over pure performance in the early stages. Encourage candid discussions about suppliers' operations, paving the way for productive dialogue and action plans. Employ market engagement methods like workshops, webinars, or roundtables, which allow discussions about sustainability and opportunities for shared best practices, innovative solution exploration, and co-created strategies. Regular follow-ups can maintain dialogue and momentum and ensure the effectiveness of sustainability plans.
Sharing and standardising critical value chain data with industry peers or other stakeholders in your value chain can reduce the assessment burden and promote consistency. This collaborative approach can lead to agreed industry-wide data collection and assessment standards, saving time and resources for everyone involved. For example, industry associations or sustainability networks often provide platforms for such collaborations.
Sedex defines ethical sourcing and provides free resources and events, including key trends in responsible sourcing webinar and a supplier questionnaire.
The suite of resources includes an example of a detailed Supplier Sustainability and Ethics Questionnaire.
Bates Wells’ guide sets out priorities for managing a responsible supply chain.
Produced by Business in the Community (BITC) in collaboration with CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project), the toolkit is designed to support faster progress on tackling supply chain emissions through supplier ‘Know, Grow, Go” methodology.
Share this Practice on:LinkedIn