Work in collaboration

• Work alongside suppliers to create the opportunity for real and lasting improvement in supply chains:
  • Establish processes to identify operational issues with suppliers. 
  • Develop and implement corrective mechanisms to resolve company-level operational issues.
    • E.g., failed audits, not providing data to buyers, other instances of non-compliance.
  • Share corrective processes, including time-bound expectations and follow-up plans to confirm corrective actions.
  • Connect issues to broader systems management improvement plans.

Consider business strategy

• Attempt to implement improvements with suppliers prior to terminating the business relationship.
• • Ensure the necessary support is available for suppliers to implement improvements.
  • Set agreed upon consequences for chronic failure to meet commitments.

Value local stakeholder knowledge

• Identify local stakeholders that may support supply chain companies’ efforts to meet company and legal requirements.
• • The RISE Community includes organizations supporting social responsibility across the globe.

Verité

• A Guide to Corrective Action and Systems Improvement Planning.

Verité

• Developing a Strategy for Corrective Action and Systems Improvement Planning.
• Fair Hiring Toolkit “Taking Corrective Action and Developing Systems Improvements.

Verité

• Fair Hiring Toolkit.

Encourage transparency through traceability

• Develop and implement interoperable, electronic traceability systems (or support existing traceability efforts) to encourage transparency between supply chain actors.
• • Traceability is a critical tool for improving logistical efficiency, verifying sustainability and social responsibility claims, and ensuring products are produced legally.

RISE Topics

• Traceability

Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability

• GDST 1.0 Standards and Materials.

Future of Fish

• Taking the First Steps Toward Full-Chain Traceability.
• Organizational Traceability Capacity Questionnaire.

FishWise, Future of Fish, IFT GFTC, and WWF

• Recommendations for Addressing Seafood Traceability and Key Data Elements.

Scope long-term agreements

• Identify products and supply chains with potential for long-term contracts or sourcing agreements.
• • Long-term contracts offer the following benefits:
    • Supply chain resilience against disruption.
    • Risk mitigation through more transparent and easily traceable sourcing.
    • Efficiency gains (i.e., a potential reduction in staff time spent seeking out or establishing partnerships with new suppliers).
    • More secure inventory of socially responsible, sustainable, or innovative products in which the company has invested.
  • Elements of long-term contracts may include:
    • Timeframe longer than one year, with built-in mechanisms for extension.
    • Specifications regarding quantity, quality, and parameters for determining price of the product purchased.
    • Specifications regarding social responsibility, sustainability, impact to workers or the land, and other shared priorities.
    • Resolution and conflict management processes.
    • Non-exclusivity clauses and insurance against non-compliance.

Pilot

• Trial supply chain improvements through pilots with long-term suppliers, with the intention of scaling, if successful.
• • Pilots provide the following benefits to companies: 
    • Calculated investments that may inform future practices or provide long-term payoffs.
    • Opportunities to share specific supply chain challenges and gains through public communications.
    • Increased understanding of supply chain challenges and potential next steps.

Consider the costs

• Support long-term suppliers to implement improvements through regular communication of successes and challenges, fair pricing of goods, and shared compliance and verification costs.

SSRN, Mendeley, and Elsevier

• Supply Networks for Relational Sourcing.

INSEAD

• Creating a Socially Responsible Supply Chain.

United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)

• The UNIDO Approach to Sustainable Supplier Development – Promoting CSR for SMEs in a Global Supply Chain Context.

The Markets Institute at WWF

• The Markets Institute at WWF: How Long-Term Contracts Can Help Drive More Sustainable Agriculture.

UNIDO

• UNIDO’s Pilot CSR interventions in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.

Provide access to effective grievance

• Ensure that seafood workers are able to safely access trusted, effective grievance or worker voice mechanisms; ensure that safeguards exist to protect workers’ confidentiality and prevent retaliation, recrimination, and dismissal.
  • Prepare to respond to grievances or human rights abuses with time-bound corrective action plans. These plans should resolve the operational issues contributing to the grievances and reduce the likelihood of similar problems.
    • See Remediate for more information about remedying wrongs to workers.
  • Form partnerships with local stakeholders to resolve grievances and implement improvements.
  • If no grievance procedure is in place, review examples and determine structures that may work best for your company.
    • Created by Global Compact Network Netherlands, Oxfam, and Shift, Doing Business with Respect for Human Rights: Remediation and Grievance Mechanisms, includes detailed information about establishing grievance protocols.

Uphold core labor rights

• Uphold seafood workers’ right to freely associate and promote seafood workers’ access to collective bargaining through trade unions. In countries with legal limitations to the rights to associate and bargain, or in sectors with limited unionization (such as work on the high seas), other forms of association or collective negotiation may need to be encouraged and fostered.
  • Utilize worker committees, trade unions, and worker voice programs to solicit worker feedback even when a grievance has not been reported.
  • Encourage global government and regulatory alignment with the International Labour Organization’s fundamental principles and rights at work, including freedom of association and the right to organize and collectively bargain, through collaborations and advocacy.

Verité

• What makes a grievance mechanism effective?

RISE

• Foundation: Worker Engagement
• Giving workers a voice in supply chains – Freedom of Association & Collective Bargaining.

ILO

• Q&As on Business and Freedom of Association.

Issara Institute

• What is Worker Voice in the Context of Global Supply Chains?

UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner

• Designing and implementing effective company-based grievance mechanisms.

Verité

• How to evaluate the effectiveness of grievance mechanisms.

ETI

• Entry points to worker representation.
• Freedom of association & collective bargaining implementation roadmap.

ILRF

• Taking Stock: Labor Exploitation, Illegal Fishing and Brand Responsibility in the Seafood Industry: This report lays out four “Essential Elements of Effective Social Responsibility in the Seafood Sector” to build an effective human rights compliance program.