ARCBLUE SERVICES

Modern Slavery Compliance

Understand your obligations and identify risks

Ensure your team understands their obligations, can identify supply chain risks, and monitor compliance.

With approximately 40 million modern slavery victims worldwide, it’s crucial that procurement and supply chain professionals understand their obligations around Modern Slavery.

A large proportion of the modern slavery victims are hidden within global supply chains and many businesses, investors and customers are unknowingly supporting the continuation of these practices.

Thankfully, the modern slavery legislation landscape is rapidly changing worldwide, governments and organisations are taking actions to eradicate modern slavery.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the prevalence of modern slavery by increasing vulnerability factors such as unemployment, lost livelihoods and growing business pressures.

It is vital that businesses understand these risks and take appropriate action to assess and address this within their supply chains.

ArcBlue’s procurement and supply chain experts support organisations to understand their obligations, identify risks, monitor compliance and arm them with the knowledge to handle any potential Modern Slavery concerns.

Our view on Modern Slavery

Some of the key trends we have noticed from our work and discussions with clients:

Organisations are passionate about eradicating modern slavery but do not always know where to start
Many organisations have not mapped their supply chains and do not have current and complete procurement data. This is vital to undertake meaningful supply chain risk assessments
Good supplier relationship management and category management are key to support ongoing due diligence and compliance
Significant impact can be made by organisations within sectors or industries working together on the issue of modern slavery

If modern slavery is suspected or found in supply chains, it is vital that procurers respond to it in an appropriate, timely, and considered way. This may include seeking support from appropriate advisors, law enforcement agencies and ‘on the ground’ experts to substantiate allegations and take actions that prevent further harm to victims.

If it is found that an organisation has caused or contributed to exploitation within its supply chain, it should assist with remediating the harm. It should also carefully consider the potential negative flow on impacts if they were to immediately end commercial relationships with risky suppliers and first seek to work together to combat modern slavery.

How we help

Supply chain risk assessments through our online msX solution
Training and capability development
Identifying potential risks of modern slavery in your supply chain
Actions to address modern slavery risks
Reviewing or preparing your organisation’s modern slavery statement
An ongoing strategy for assessing and addressing modern slavery within your organisation
Development of organisational strategies and frameworks
Review and update of policies, procedures and codes of conduct
Assistance with implementing modern slavery considerations within the procurement activity including: evaluation criteria, response schedule questions, supplier assessment questionnaires and associated evaluation methodology, contract management and reporting.

Assess the risk of your supply base and meet your compliance requirements with our msX digital hub

msX provides a simple online risk self-assessment solution to assess the risk of your supply base and meet your compliance requirements. It follows a structured process to assess risk through your supply chain and meet your reporting obligations. msX analytics can provide cross-sector insights, not just limiting you to single organisation visibility.

Data Analytics

Bring in feeds of spend data from your finance system to visualise your MS risk profile
Risk Assessment

Identify high risk suppliers through assessment against multiple feeds of MS data
Supplier Questionnaires

Issue tailored questionnaires to high risk suppliers to deep dive into their MS practices
Supplier Evaluation

Evaluate responses to identify risks for further due diligence activities
msX Statement

Use outputs to feed into development of your Modern Slavery Statements