Ensure Sustainability’s Effectiveness

In today’s regulatory landscape, stakeholders are holding companies accountable for the performance of their supply chains.

For example, your company could come under fire from external stakeholders for failing to take necessary steps to keep your sourcing activities clean. The good news, according to Travis Miller, general counsel at Assent Compliance Inc., New York (assentcompliance.com), is stakeholders are more forgiving of companies that deploy reasonable safeguards and practices. 

As Miller explained in a recent detailed guest post for Shopfloor.org, the blog of the National Association of Manufacturers, Washington (nam.org), a well-designed sustainability program can protect a brand’s image and proactively mitigate liability potential.  He went on to list 10 best practices for designing such programs.

• Develop a program with an efficient due-diligence process and a detailed review workflow to examine suppliers and identify risk.

• Gain management buy-in and assign a senior executive to oversee the sustainability program, while developing progressive goals and milestones.

• Create a sustainability team that is independent, experienced, and qualified, with resources relative to other company programs.

• Integrate your program with existing operation framework and global supply-chain operations. Assign specific employees to ensure effective integration.

• Assess sustainability issues that are relevant to your suppliers’ industries and examine data to determine risk potential.

• Establish a process that enables your company to assess risk regularly and create an action plan.

• Verify all supplier information and develop procedures for investigating high-risk suppliers.

• Administer sustainability-training programs to employees and suppliers and track and document the training progress.

• Review your program on an ongoing basis and document and report on year-over-year progress.

• Set objectives and expectations for suppliers and document how you engage, screen, monitor, and manage supplier risk.

• Find Travis Miller’s complete blog post “Best Practices to Designing an Effective Sustainability Program” on shopfloor.com. EP

Assent Compliance Inc., New York (assentcompliance.com), is a provider of supply-chain data-management solutions.