As we seek to better support our customers with innovative and energy efficient products, we face additional social and environmental risks within our growing supply chain. Through our Responsible Procurement programme, we work to mitigate these potentially adverse impacts by identifying risks and engaging suppliers to implement processes that will improve operating standards.
In 2012 Centrica focussed on increasing our understanding of the risks faced from within our supply chain, by delivering an online pilot scheme that drove a risk-based approach to evaluating corporate responsibility (CR) within higher-risk areas of the supply chain. To help us do this, we partnered with EcoVadis, who specialise in implementing sustainable management programmes1.
Although none of our assessed suppliers were identified as posing a ‘high risk’, a small proportion were classed as being of ‘medium risk’. And in 2013, we will work to support these ‘medium risk’ suppliers by implementing corrective action plans to deliver agreed improvements. We further assessed 4,000 suppliers for bribery risk, four of which were identified as requiring additional monitoring to ensure their internal processes had appropriate anti-bribery processes in place. These suppliers will be required to supply evidence of compliance with our CR clauses.
The pilot scheme was successful and from 2013, suppliers will be required to undergo a CR assessment by EcoVadis in order to become one of our strategic suppliers. The assessment process, together with the site visits we make to our strategic suppliers to discuss performance and supplier management processes, helps detect where we can work with suppliers to improve standards and ensure better management of risks.
In 2013 Centrica will continue to strengthen our approach to Responsible Procurement. For more information on our partnership with EcoVadis and our supplier assessment process, view the communication sent to our suppliers as well as our joint Responsible Procurement brochure. If you would like additional details of our Responsible Procurement programme, please email Responsible.Procurement@centrica.com.
1 EcoVadis methodology for managing risk is supervised by a scientific committee, which comprises of recognised CR experts and is managed through an advanced web platform offering collaborative and comparative analysis on a range of company CR policies and performance.