3 reasons why your company needs an effective supply chain grievance mechanism
As businesses with global supply chains strive to make their operations more sustainable, they need to understand what is happening at the factory level and, thus, enable workers and other rightsholders to make their voices heard through effective grievance mechanisms. Providing access to remedy is also essential to ensure key principles of good governance, such as transparency and accountability, and it benefits your company in more ways than one.
1. Get insights into labour risks in your supply chain
Complaints mechanisms are a valuable source of information about your supply chain, alongside social audits like amfori BSCI. They even serve as early warning systems that can alert you to potential risks. When a worker raises a concern, you get real-time feedback that enables you to address those risks proactively. Moreover, such mechanisms provide important insights to support your sustainability reporting.
2. Drive sustainable change in your operations
If left unchecked, risks raised through grievances can become more complex to manage and remediate. Therefore, an effective complaints mechanism will enable you to reduce costs and effort. And since there is no supply chain without risk, grievances are an opportunity for you to take action and improve your operations. This will in turn enhance your brand reputation among customers, investors, and future talent.
3. Comply with due diligence legislation
Based on international standards such as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, existing and upcoming due diligence legislation requires that companies establish complaints mechanisms in order to provide access to remedy to rightsholders in their supply chains. It is therefore in your company’s interest to start working on this sooner rather than later, as ensuring your grievance mechanism is effective across all operational levels can take some time. That way, you will be ready when the time comes.
How amfori can help
With amfori Speak for Change, we offer a solution that enables companies to achieve these objectives and more.
Our supply chain grievance mechanism programme is designed to strengthen existing operational-level complaints mechanisms by providing additional feedback channels tailored to the local context to foster trust and accessibility among workers and communities. We also support the onboarding of our members’ business partners through several onboarding sessions, tools and materials continuously developed to enable them to implement the programme.
The programme also aims to facilitate the complaint handling process for businesses. Using our own case management system, we collect grievances on behalf of our members and we support them in the investigation and remediation processes with independent local experts to ensure impartiality and efficiency. Moreover, all members involved in a case get the opportunity to work together to reduce the investigation and remediation costs and increase their leverage to drive sustainable change in their supply chains.
Ready to give a voice to your supply chain?
As an amfori member, you play an important role in the successful implementation of amfori Speak for Change. Encourage your business partners to deploy the programme at their sites and share the deployment materials to support them in this process.
Not a member yet? Contact us to learn more about the amfori membership and our solutions, including amfori Speak for Change.