A converged assessment framework for social and labour compliance that aims to reduce or eliminate audit fatigue could allow brands and suppliers to invest more in true corrective remediation, its organisers have said.
With input from companies such as NIKE and Timberland, the Social&Labor Convergence Project (SLCP) this week entered the second stage of piloting following its initial launch in October 2015 and the launch of the first prototype in February. Its aim is to move the apparel and footwear industry from excessive audits toward more sustainable social and labour improvements.
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Global labour framework project launches second pilot
“Improved working conditions is why we’re doing this,” says Janet Mensink, director of the SLCP. “It’s not reducing the duplications for the sake of it. We want to have good assessments, and with the converged assessment tool you are all collecting the same information so you can compare results and that will accelerate the improvement focus.
“But if you save so much in resources, how do you use this? Is it added to the bottom line or is it re-deployed to things that really matter, like changing the industry and improving working conditions?”
Audit fatigue is a topic of conversation that has been happening in the industry for over a decade, with several attempts already made to try and tackle the problem.
Colleen Vien, sustainability director at Timberland, says she was one of those involved in prior attempts.
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By GlobalData“Some factories are being audited 25-50 times a year. How do they possibly have enough time to actually work on true sustainable collective action? So the motivation is to help factories get to a point where we reduce, if not eliminate, the audit fatigue our suppliers are going through. And by doing so, the theory is that more time and resources can be invested in true corrective remediation.”
Industry-wide project
The updated framework will be pilot tested in around 175 facilities across 23 countries over the coming months, ranging from Myanmar and China to Lesotho and Honduras. It will cover factories beyond Tier 1 and a range of facility sizes and product types.
The vision is that the tool becomes “industry-wide”, and that means thinking at scale, and so by 2019/20, Mensink believes the number of factories involved in the project will be in the 10,000’s, rather than the hundreds.
If it does not achieve this, then she says the assessment framework will end up being “just another way of assessing the 175 we already have”.
But those involved are optimistic, and the scope of the project has reached Tier 3 factories, albeit on a small scale. “That means there is an appetite to use this when we go live in 2018 for not just the RMG factories,” explains Mensink.
The bulk, however, are Tier 1, with a “significant number” of Tier 2 factories.
The project is being backed by more than 160 signatories from leading stakeholders including the Netherlands Government, Williams-Sonoma, and Sri Lankan apparel body JAAF – all of which have collaborated to develop the updated assessment.
Vien believes this is a good enough number to get the ball rolling. “Then I think it will just continue to grow. It’s not only going to be something coming from brands but also external auditing firms who will recommend to their clients they participate in this process because it benefits the brands, the factories, and the external auditing firms. Factories can volunteer to be involved too. So it can come into play from all different angles,” she tells just-style.
Art of negotiation
The journey to the second pilot, however, has not been without its challenges – namely bringing everyone together and the process of negotiation that goes with that.
Vien explains: “Whether it’s the factories feeling the audits are overly burdensome, and then balancing that against the needs of the NGOs and the brands to make sure we can have good strong faith in the working conditions of those factories – there is a balance that needs to be found there.
“There is also an art to negotiation that is happening within the brands because there are some who have higher expectations of their factories than others. So the tool needed to be flexible in order to meet the variety of the types of expectations. But it’s not something that can’t be overcome.”
The real achievement, Mensink says, has been bringing so many stakeholders to the negotiating table, from the manufacturers, inter-governmental organisations, standard holders and auditors to the brands and civil society.
“Bringing all these stakeholders together discussing views on what kind of information and data is relevant, what should be in and what should be out – the way we’ve done it is the right way but that hasn’t always been easy,” she explains.
“It has sometimes been difficult to get to a place where everyone has viewed it from all the different angles and placed themselves in the shoes of the others – for some organisations that was new and that takes time and we are still under a bit of time pressure but that is the biggest challenge we have had.”
Final hurdle
All feedback from the second pilot and the public consultation that runs in parallel will be used to develop the third prototype of the converged assessment framework in early 2018. The final version is expected to be launched in May 2018, which both Vien and Mensink are confident they are on-track to achieve.
Mensink says that, from now on, it is about “polishing” the framework to ensure it is ready for full launch in May.
“The next big challenge for me is to find ways to address the adoption and operations side of it,” she adds. “We need to think about how we are going to organise the hosting and sharing of all that information. It’s a big task.
“We have the commitment of quite a few of the leaders in our programme and they are already planning for a couple of hundred to use this converged framework in 2018 and onwards. So to keep up with that we really need to start developing the operational side of it. That is the priority on my agenda from this week onwards.”
Beyond that, all of the stakeholders will look to develop a five-year strategy that is expected to be rolled out in 2019.
