Achilles Experience: Helping Sir Robert McAlpine and British Land to tackle Mode...
Ethical issues in construction supply chains are only invisible if…
With legislators demanding accountability to eliminate modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking from supply chains, organisations need to take steps to understand the risks, demonstrate compliance and commit to taking necessary action.
Our Ethical Business programme supports your business’ social and regulatory compliance, providing a holistic view across labour practices supported with guidance to help you analyse and prevent unethical business practices within your supply chain. We equip companies with the tools to support continuous improvement in tackling the problem, and the means of tracking progress to help stay ahead of unethical business practices in individual business and supply chains.
Assess
Demonstrate
Mitigate
Hear from Alice Hands, Head of Ethical and Sustainable Procurement at Sir Robert McAlpine on her experience with our Ethical Business Programme (formally Labour Practice Audits).
Our Ethical Business Programme is supported by the Achilles Ethical Business Working Group formed of leading construction and infrastructure companies and is supported by anti- slavery charity, Unseen UK. The Ethical Business programme has the primary objective of raising standards relating to ethical employment practices through cross industry collaboration. There are two types of assessment we use to support customers within the programme:
Ethical Site Survey
Dynamic, confidential worker interviews capturing feedback on the employment conditions of workers across multiple disciplines and trades on operational project sites.
Ethical Employment Audit
Focussing on your company’s processes of engagement and employment of both direct and indirectly employed workers. Involving an inspection of company’s documents employment records, policies and procedures.
‘Continuous improvement is the key to mitigating risks of worker exploitation and modern slavery. Having a long-term approach to managing and mitigating risks and regularly reviewing progress will ensure businesses know where they are and where they need to get to. In doing so, businesses will be able to recognise the signs of exploitation and deal with them effectively, learning lessons and applying them back into core business practises. To make the progress needed, we must create a more transparent environment and move away from the tick box mentality that is sadly failing workers in all sectors.’ Justine Currell, Executive Director, Unseen UK.
The 5 parts of our programme can be tailored to your organisational needs, specific to your requirements.
UNDERSTAND
Develop a high level understanding of your suppliers’ compliance on ethical business and human rights focused on regulatory requirements and recognised international standards.
IDENTIFY
Going beyond the high-level view in stage 1, our qualified auditors will carry out anonymous face to face interviews on site with a random sample of workers. You will be able to gather insight into workforce wages, right to work, temporary work, provision of rest time, fair treatment, and modern slavery awareness.
INVESTIGATE
An in-depth management system audit designed to identify areas of improvement through the assessment of employment processes and employment terms conditions. The audit is focussed on all aspects of the workforce including your own employees, agency staff, sub-contractors and other third parties.
IMPROVE
To support continuous improvement within the programme, we offer discounted training services with partners such as Unseen UK and SCSS. Providing you with the correct tools to address issues and develop meaningful, long term targets to help prevent any future risks of unethical business practices in your supply chain.
TRACK
We will provide you with a regular key insight report across the whole programme, including high level stats and strategic information to benchmark and drive continuous improvement.
At Achilles, our purpose is to help you raise your ethical business standards and improve your business performance. With our Ethical Business Programme, we empower organisations allowing you to identify, analyse and improve your business’ social and regulatory compliance. We guide you through the whole cycle offering insights to track and measure improvement, helping you take the action where necessary and mitigate the risk of unethical business practices in your business and supply chain. Request a call back for more information.