The brands and retailers are engaged to improve social standards in their supply chains for many decades. The plethora of social audit schemes have increased burden on brands and suppliers without achieving desired social outcomes while the baseline issues still afloat. In terms of “lean manufacturing”, audits could be adding cost but not real value. This is a global challenge for all brands and industries. With the changing landscape of consumer demand, it was never more serious than today to evolve the industrial practices to a sustainable, reliable and impactful intervention.

We acknowledge audits can be effective tool of measuring the performance but nowhere near bringing the change in behavior and practices. To meet this challenge, we have developed a tool combining best elements of audit and education. This tool would serve as a generic platform for suppliers and brands to achieve change in practice and embed social and labour standards compliance. The tool is unique in its applicability and caters for all Social compliance schemes and code of conduct.

Unlike other models available in the market this is the only model that talks about all three sides of triangle- i.e. Brand, Suppliers and workers and equally benefit all stakeholders. Once this tool is adapted it can deliver on any social audit schemes.

• Benefits for brands: Cost Effective, Change led, Sustainable, 1-2 days depending on factory size
• Benefits for suppliers: Happy workforce, free Education by experts, Increased productivity
• Benefits for worker: Fair Wages, Personal development, Workers rights,

The tool will enable companies to calculate return on investment (ROI). Research shows happy workers are 13% more productive and 28.4% less absent than unhappy workers. It will also assist companies to see exact benefits if 100% of their staff is happy.

It is a systematic approach to identify the gaps through self-assessment. The education plan is agreed with the factory before the visit in light with their potential non-conformities. This is followed by facilitating appraisal-based dialogue between workers representatives and management and agree on a plan of action. This will eventually built factory management and worker’s understanding on key issues and encourage them to take ownership for a sustainable solution.

This tool uses universal principles of social sustainability and will address CoC of any brand and any social audit scheme. This is an intervention-based model that will deliver desired outcomes instead of tick box exercise against a traditional checklist. This will address all concerns raised by the brands and help businesses flourish with happy and productive workforce.

Globally there are many cases where Brands with the best intentions, audit schemes and systems still face bad media reputation due to failing to perform on social sustainability standards, labour and human rights abuse in supply chain. Be it NIKE, Apple or Kick all unfolds the story behind the wall of child labour, forced labour and lack of provision of fair wages in global supply chains. Today transparency in supply chain is bigger challenge for businesses than Cost reductions, flexibility and speed of delivery.

GSUK offers a holistic solution that assures full adherence to labour standards and transparency in supply chain. Our program provides end to end capacity building and training across the supply chain. The selected programs will provide a paradigm to the team on maximizing their potential and enable them to add value to the organisation at various levels in Hierarchy.

It is 4 tier programs as described below

SSC looks at the process from raw material to the final consumption addressing Social, Environmental and Economical components of sustainability. This program is based on below Global Compact Principles

Our sustainable supply chain program will cover building on strengths, identifying gaps, providing training and comprehensive technical implementation of Sustainability standards and measures.

This model is developed on risk base approach where we provide a detailed map of plausible risks in supply chain related to labour standards abuse and support the organisation to develop a proactive communication and social dialogue program. This programs steer towards a strategic direction for leaders to deliver on social sustainability and have due diligence inbuilt in the Corporate structure. We enable organisation to deliver a model based on

1. Due diligence in procurement function
2. Capacity building using present resources
3. Supply chain analysis and identification of risks
4. Communication strategy
5. Managing and Monitoring framework

This program is delivered with a vision to build supply chain quality management system by empowering suppliers and buyers. The key program deliverables include Risk verification, Social risk matrix, Supply chain risk management strategy, Stakeholder engagement and capacity building tools to improve social performance.

Social dialogue is one of the most important methodology to identify industrial challenges, flourish culture of adaptability and conclude mutual agreements. Using our experience of delivering successful multi stakeholder social dialogue programs we can fulfil requirements of any industry across the world. We have team of experts to deliver interactive programs to bridge the communication gap, create awareness and deliver on mutual objectives.

This include identifying stakeholders, agreeing on common objectives, bringing management and workers on same page for a productive social dialogue. This program is based on an approach to deliver the change of behaviors and practices to influence policy level decision making. We work Nationally and Internationally to facilitate social dialogue for various Industries and utilised various techniques ranging from structured session to capturing client stories. Our multilinguistic team of experts present in various parts of the world provide us an edge to implement Social dialogue in a robust way, using techniques that gel in with cultural and local norms.