2. Educating Vendors, Merchants and New Associates about Ethical Sourcing
Education and Training
Vendor Training
In September 2007 Julie Yan, Senior Manager, Social Compliance and Reporting, travelled to Shenzhen, China to meet with existing and new vendors and to audit factories. Julie shared Hbc’s Vendor Code of Conduct and took time to learn about the concerns the vendors have. Vendors learned about Hbc’s expectations for goods they produce, and Hbc learned of vendor issues in producing the goods, such as higher operating costs or lack of training. The end result of these sessions is that Hbc and our vendors work collaboratively in order to meet the requirements in the Code and improve working conditions in factories.
Merchant Training
Comments
“This was very interesting, especially from the production aspect, and good to know that we have such strong standards. It helps to give peace of mind to myself and to my customers.”
“Valuable session; an important topic to learn more about.”
Hbc Global Sourcing regularly meets with Hbc product developers and merchants to ensure compliance with Hbc’s Vendor Code of Conduct. In spring 2007, Global Sourcing held lunch and learn sessions for Hbc’s product development teams to talk about vendor set-up procedures and social compliance. The sessions were attended by more than 40 participants from Hbc’s Total Brand Management teams.
During the summer and fall of 2007, Hbc’s Social Compliance Team attended all of the merchant groups’ operations meetings. This allowed all of Hbc’s merchants to review Hbc’s social compliance policy and process as well as explain the vendor set-up process for each of the specific merchandise groups.
On-line Training Course
To ensure that social compliance is integrated into our core business decisions and operations, we created an on-line training tool to help our associates understand our policies and procedures on ethical sourcing. All associates in the merchandising division and new hires are required to complete this course. In 2007, 764 associates completed the on-line training course. To date, since the on-line course was launched, over 1,500 associates have completed the course.
The course covers:
- The Vendor Code of Conduct
- The policy – Hbc’s policy on social compliance
- The process – how vendors participate in the program and how vendors are set up in the system once the social compliance audit has taken place