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by Trevor Loveday

Auditor launches ethical standard for supply chain employment practices

Procurement standards auditor, Achilles, has launched a standard for ethical employment practices to “enable industry to identify, investigate and improve employment conditions within their supply chain.”


Achilles lists four key components of its Ethical Business Programme (derived from its former Labour Practice Audit):

  • a site survey focusing on on labour standards including wages, right to work, fair treatment of staff through anonymised interviews with onsite workers;

  • an ethical employment audit focusing on employment practices in house and at contractors’ and agencies’ operations;

  • an action plan focusing on compliance, training, mitigation, remediation support and annual goal setting; and

  • providing insight into business ethics from key statistics and data from across the programme to benchmark and drive continuous improvement

  • The programme’s development was supported by anti-slavery charity, Unseen, and

  • infrastructure and construction companies including: British Land, Cadent, Costain, Morgan Sindall Group, Sir Robert McAlpine, Skanska, Statkraft and Wates

The programme is, according to Achilles’ chief executive, Jay Katzen “a huge step forward in tackling modern slavery, and creating more ethical, sustainable supply chains. We know that initiatives like this only work when you engage the full supply chain.”


Head of ethical and sustainable procurement at Sir Robert McAlpine said: “For the last few years Achilles has been delivering labour practice audits that have enabled us to assess our supply chain. The formation of this group will allow the industry to work together to further develop this service, and it will provide a collaborative approach to addressing the risk of modern slavery and labour exploitation.”

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