Modern Slavery – It’s time to Act

In June, I attended the CIPS Gloucester branch event on Modern Slavery, which was presented by the hugely enlightening Andrew Wallis, OBE & CEO of Unseen. Unseen is a charity with the aim of working towards a world without slavery. It was shocking to learn how rife modern slavery is, even in the UK, with an estimated 21 million people worldwide the victims of forced labour.

As of April 2016, organisations with a turnover of £36 million with business conducted in the UK were required to report annually on the measures they have introduced to ensure there is no modern slavery taking place in their supply chain. Organisations are required to publish a Modern Slavery Act for each financial year, and it’s recommended to be published within 6 months of the organisations financial year.

If you’re in an organisation whose financial year ends in March/April, time is quickly running out to publish this year’s Act.

Procurement professionals are at the forefront in the fight against Modern Slavery. With responsibility and visibility over the supply chain, and critically, what due diligence is done and the business systems to manage the risk. Market Dojo’s Supplier Information Management system (SIM) tool, SIM Dojo can quickly and easy help procurement teams to establish the processes and policies to help detect and identify potential risks concerning Modern Slavery.

Whilst is it almost impossible for an organisation to audit and monitor every supplier within a supply chain, it is even harder to manage and track this information through Excel or an equivalent. Using SIM Dojo, you can quickly capture details from your entire supply chain on what steps they have taken regarding the Modern Slavery Act, as well as allowing them to upload a copy of their Act. Another huge benefit of the system is the ability to set automatic reminders to notify your entire supply chain to provide an update on the additional measures they have taken to address Modern Slavery since last year.

SIM Dojo is an affordable, quick to implement system to ensure that the necessary due diligence can be performed on your supply chain. Please don’t let the use of ill-equipped tools or costs be a reason for not implementing a suitable Modern Slavery Act policy. We can even provide you with a questionnaire template for the Modern Slavery Act to enable you to hit the ground running.

This article was originally published on Pulse which can be found here, alternatively, discover more on the implications of the Modern Slavery Act.

Market Dojo helps procurement professionals negotiate better with our on-demand eSourcing tools. If you’d like to find out more, get in touch or register for free and play around with our software for yourself!