Providing quality jobs through suppliers | WPN World People News

There are estimated 13,000 people in slavery across the UK because of their restricted working conditions. Most commonly, people are trafficked into forced labour in industries such as agriculture, construction, hospitality, manufacturing and car washes.

As a UK listed financial services company we rarely come into contact with these industries but we recognize that we can play a key role with our suppliers to make sure that we keep pushing for quality jobs to be created through our procurement activities. In a typical year we will spend between £500 and £600 million in asking other companies to deliver products or services to our customers and business on our behalf.

During our adoption of the UK Modern Slavery Act we have decided to go way beyond what we have to do to design a new set of data sets, scenarios and conversations that we expect to have with all of our suppliers to reduce slavery risk and increase the number of quality jobs.

It started with a workshop.

We asked our “critical friends” at Anti-Slavery International to run the workshop to help us really understand how slavery plays out in a UK context and how we would practically spot signs of slavery day-in, day-out when working with our suppliers.

We were pleased to also host companies such as Whistl, Crown records Management, TCS, IBM, L&G Homes, Communisis, CH & Co, Lusso Catering and JLL to name but a few.

What became clear early on is that the signs of modern slavery aren’t always obvious; they are subtle and often hidden. It is everyone’s responsibility in the business to be vigilant, look out for signs and report them accordingly.

Source:Anti-Slavery