Better conditions in the value chain through local presence
Many countries have adopted laws intended to deal with poor working conditions and environmental pollution. Unfortunately compliance with these laws is sometimes inadequate. To ensure the compliance of third-party manufacturers, Asker has its own audit office based in China, India and Malaysia.
The office carries out routine visits and audits, including unannounced ones, to ensure that all third-party manufacturers meet Asker’s standards. Since the Shanghai office was set up in 2012, they have carried out more than 200 audits.
These have led to clear improvements in the health and safety of workers, reasonable working hours and the implementation of robust systems for ensuring that third-party manufacturers fulfil their social responsibility.
Allen Fang is the Supplier Sustainability Manager and has worked in Asker’s audit office since 2013. He has learnt many things over the years.
What’s the most important thing to keep in mind when planning an audit?
“It’s incredibly important to ensure that our audits have the de-sired effect. We conform with recognised, international standards and each audit visit is tailored to deal with the risks specific to the factory or site to be audited. Our team is trained in how to carry out audits under SA8000, and we ensure that all audits are per-formed correctly and followed up and escalated if required.”
What are the biggest challenges?
“We always need to keep ourselves updated on new or changing laws and regulations. Sometimes the third-party manufacturers aren’t completely transparent and hide information about actual working hours or the actual supply chain. In between the audits we put a lot of time into checking that they implement actions to address the problems that we’ve identified.”
Can you give an example of an audit when you identified a problem and the supplier then implemented improvements?
“We carried out an audit in Pakistan where a third-party manufacturer had a four-storey building with only one emergency evacuation exit. As a secondary exit was required, we suggested that they install an outside staircase, which they had done by the next time we visited them. Another example is a Chinese third-party manufacturer that engaged a full-time environment, health and safety (EHS) specialist to manage EHS risks as a direct consequence of poor results in our audit. During an audit in Taiwan, we discovered that foreign workers from Indonesia had paid recruitment fees to the third-party manufacturer to be able to get jobs there. These fees have been paid back to the workers.”
When did you realise that you wanted to work with human rights and business ethics?
“It was when I travelled to Malaysia for the first time ten years ago. I saw 30-40 migrant workers squeezed into a small dormitory, with no access to their passports. I felt that there was a lot of opportunity for me to make a difference, and even if it takes time, improvements are happening. During the last eight years enormous changes have taken place, and many things are completely different now compared to before, although there is always more than can be done.
It’s a great advantage to have employees on the ground in Asia to supervise and implement social standards at the Asker companies’ third-party manufacturers:
- Provides more in-depth monitoring through local knowledge of the culture and conditions
- Enables rapid local support and training and direct communication
- Reduces language barriers
- Enables hands-on support for implementation of and compliance with social standards and continuous access to expertise
- Enables continuous monitoring
