Embedding LGBT Equality into Procurement Practices and Supply Chain Management
Stonewall is here to let all lesbian, gay, bi and trans people know they’re not alone. Our work with employers is integral to this mission. Companies working across the UK – and the world – can have an enormous impact on the well-being of their LGBT employees. They can also play an important role in raising awareness of LGBT issues within their supply chains and partner organisations. Simmons & Simmons have been a partner to Stonewall for many years and have a well-established commitment to LGBT equality. They have been consistently recognised in our annual ranking of employers, the Stonewall Top 100. Following three years in the Top 10 of this highly competitive list, we recognised Simmons & Simmons as a Stonewall Star Performer. This exclusive accolade celebrates the very best employers for LGBT people. Each year, we challenge our Star Performers to find new and innovative ways to advance LGBT equality. This year, we asked each of them to share what they have learned, in the form of a bestpractice guide on a topic where they have shown significant progress. Simmons & Simmons demonstrate a commitment to LGBT equality that goes beyond just supporting their own staff. The innovative ways in which they have engaged with their partners and suppliers to influence and inform their inclusion initiatives are a valuable example to others. We welcome this guide and hope that it inspires employers to do more to engage their suppliers and partners, and drive change across all industries. We invite you to join with us, and with Simmons & Simmons, in working towards acceptance without exception for LGBT people everywhere.
Ruth Hunt, Chief Executive, Stonewall
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Foreword We have a strong record for working with our suppliers and contractors and supporting them to improve and develop their corporate responsibility (CR) commitment. We recognise the indirect social and environmental impact of our procurement activities with suppliers and contractors and our CR supplier programme addresses this from the outset, during the tender process and via ongoing monitoring and best-practice sharing. We are pleased to be able to share some of the ways we have engaged our suppliers in our core CR activities, including Diversity & Inclusion and LGBT equality and we hope this will enable you to build stronger relationships with suppliers to your organisations. Everyone at our firm has an important part to play in supporting and progressing our CR strategy and I’m very pleased about the increased level of engagement this year and continuous commitment to embedding good practice across our supply chain. Colin Passmore Senior Partner Simmons & Simmons
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Our Approach At Simmons & Simmons, we seek to provide legal services according to the highest ethical and professional standards and we take our responsibilities to our clients, our people, our suppliers and the communities in which we do business seriously. We are proud of our culture of corporate responsibility (CR) which seeks to govern how we operate, how we interact with clients and each other, and how we participate in our local communities. Our CR strategy encompasses our commitment to diversity and inclusion (D&I). Our D&I policy sets out our responsibility to promote D&I, to prevent discrimination and to provide a supportive and inclusive working environment. The policy states that: “Everyone, including contractors and anyone who works on site, prospective recruits and visitors will be treated fairly and with dignity and respect regardless of any of the following characteristics: age, disability, marriage and civil partnership, sexual orientation, pregnancy, maternity and paternity, race, religion or belief, gender, gender reassignment status, part-time or full-time status and union membership status.” We recognise that the influence of our business operations runs deeper than internal policies and practices, interactions with colleagues and office locations. We are aware of the indirect impact of our relationships with suppliers and contactors and have found collaboration and knowledgesharing to be the most successful driver of success in this area. To ensure that our suppliers share our values and commitment to CR: D&I, ethical business, environmental sustainability, charitable work and community engagement we have built and developed processes into our procurement and existing supply chain practices. This Procurement Practices and Supply Chain Management guide is intended for organisations that want to build sustainable relationships with their existing and potential supply chain. It will help you to engage suppliers on D&I best practice and LGBT awareness specifically, and to develop understanding about ethical standards. We hope this guide will support you to have meaningful conversations with the businesses that deliver to your people, clients and customers every day.
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Our Story and Business Case We first engaged with our suppliers on CR issues in 2009. In 2011, our firm became a signatory of the UN Global Compact, an international CR standard, to ensure that we are conducting business to the highest ethical standards. Embedding CR awareness into our supply chain management has also enabled us to evaluate our own practices and monitor our third party interactions. It is important to note that engaging with our supply chain in this way goes beyond compliance. It has enabled us to build better and more sustainable relationships with our suppliers, to understand more about their priorities and to collaborate and support them to develop their commitment to CR. To this end we have implemented a process for potential and existing suppliers. We have found that suppliers understand the need to address CR & D&I at the point of procurement and during the tendering process. Suppliers are competing for business and it is essential and not uncommon that they should understand your organisation’s priorities. Many suppliers have come to expect questions and dialogue on CR & D&I from the outset and it is an increasingly useful tool for organisations to learn about important issues affecting their suppliers.
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The Supplier Tendering Process We ensure that discussion about CR & D&I is introduced at the beginning of our contact with potential suppliers. We want potential suppliers to understand that D&I is important to our firm, therefore we require all tenderers to have a D&I policy of an equal standard to our own. Our policy explicitly refers to all protected characteristics, including sexual orientation, gender identity and gender reassignment status. At the start of the process, the CR & Diversity team checks that the potential supplier’s policy meets the requisite standard. Potential suppliers are also asked to submit a copy of their ethics and environmental policies. The firm’s procurement policy states: “All invitations to tender must contain the following Equal Opportunities and Diversity Policy clauses: Simmons & Simmons has a diversity & inclusion policy. Details of this policy and the areas that it covers can be accessed through the firm’s website…Suppliers to Simmons & Simmons are required to have a similar policy at least as comprehensive as our own and to provide details of these policies to us, including evidence that policy compliance is actively and positively monitored. The supplier is responsible for monitoring their own policy and proactively providing evidence of compliance. Those suppliers which do not provide evidence of compliance will be given a reminder/opportunity to comply. Continuing non-compliance may result in termination of our trading relationship with such suppliers.” Once responses to the invitation to tender have been received, each supplier is assessed and scored during the shortlisting process. An example of a scoring system is below: A7.
REF H. H1
H2 H3
H4 H5 Figure 1
The tenderer shall provide in an Appendix signed and dated copy of HS&E policies, environmental policies, CR, equal opportunity, diversity & inclusion and discrimination, etc. CRITERIA HEALTH, SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL and CR The Tenderer shall provide details of how it communicates these policies to staff, including the assurance of their understanding of the content and ensuring compliance. The Tenderer shall provide details on how it ensures compliance with statutory requirements in these areas and its approach to utilising best practice. The Tenderer shall provide details relating to any HS&E / Environmental / CR issues including any recent enforcement or prosecutory notices, and also demonstrate in detail how it would actively support Simmons & Simmons’s own CSR department and policies generally The Tenderer shall provide details on risk assessment procedures and accident reporting. The Tenderer shall provide details on the number of accidents / RIDDOR incidents over the last 5 years.
Pass / Fail
MAX SCORE 13 2
2 5
2 2
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Case Study In early 2014, the Simmons & Simmons Facilities Management team started the tender process for a suite of services worth c. £3.5m per annum. Following a pre-qualification questionnaire and a site visit with 14 possible suppliers, the invitation to tender (ITT) was sent to seven organisations, five of whom submitted responses. Criteria developed covering the whole contract is used to score each submission. This ensures that we identify the strengths and weaknesses of each organisation, whilst ensuring their values match our own. The suppliers’ approach to CR, (worth 9% of the total scoring) was sought with the questions in figure 1. The two shortlisted tenderers answered all the questions comprehensively, clearly demonstrating their commitment to CR and values that match our own. Both tenderers that were pitching had similar CR credentials. The final decision was made to appoint the organisation that focused on supporting its people, and which prioritised this over a focus on technology.
Quote from existing supplier about the tendering process:
“The tendering process gave us an opportunity to reflect and review on our internal policies and processes and ensure they were adequate. We knew that Simmons & Simmons were committed to diversity and it was great to see this was reflected in the process” 6
Working with Existing Suppliers We continue to work with our suppliers throughout the lifetime of their contract with the firm to support development and improvement across their commitment to CR. We are one of the few international law firms to have in place a process for ongoing supply chain monitoring and collaboration and our programme was recognised by Stonewall as being one of the most comprehensive across all sectors in the UK.
Supplier CR & Diversity Audit Our top 25 suppliers (determined by frequency of transaction and across range of industries) are invited to participate in our annual CR audit. The annual audit sets out to achieve the following objectives: to liaise with our core group of suppliers with regards to their CR and D&I commitment and initiatives; to share CR best practice with our supply chain; and to measure and monitor the commitment of our key suppliers to CR. We use a survey comprised of both multiple choice and open text responses created using an online survey platform to conduct the audit. Key contacts at supplier organisations are sent an email (see figure 2) and given a deadline by which to complete the survey. Once this has lapsed, we chase our suppliers for all outstanding responses and missing information. Respondents are given four weeks to complete the survey and the internal Simmons & Simmons manager is copied into all communication The multiple choice questions in the survey are presented as a statement and respondents indicate their feedback. Positive and negative feedback is drawn from this scale, for example, if a supplier indicated they had a D&I policy, this would receive a positive score. Once all responses are collated, suppliers are benchmarked and this is followed by best practice information sharing at themed roundtable events.
Scoring All responses are collated into a spread sheet and evaluated based on the positive and negative responses received. Each question has equal weight and an average is drawn for each section (ethics, D&I, charitable work and community engagement, environment, and auditing your own suppliers). A score is given to each supplier and from this we are able to provide a total score rating which is also out of 5 (based on the number of sections). If the supplier has achieved 80% or more positive responses in one section they will receive one point. We also monitor the audit response rate which has dramatically increased year on year from 42% in 2012 to 72% in 2015. 7
Example: email template to suppliers Dear X, As part of our commitment to Corporate Responsibility (CR), Simmons & Simmons proactively monitors the sustainability and diversity of its supply chain. As one of the more significant suppliers to Simmons & Simmons, we kindly request that you contribute to this monitoring by completing an online CR questionnaire (click here). Please return your completed questionnaire by Friday 4 December. Kind regards Figure 2
Quote from existing supplier about the audit:
“Taking part in the supplier audit allowed us to look at every aspect of CR in our business and it was great to get feedback on how we compared to other businesses in our sector”.
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Example: D&I audit questions The audit questions are divided into the following sections: ethics; D&I, charitable work and community engagement, environment and auditing your own suppliers. We also request a copy of each supplier’s ethics, D&I and environmental policies. For the purpose of this best practice guide, we have shared the questions from the D&I section below:
Do you have a diversity & inclusion policy that covers; gender, race, religion or belief, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender reassignment status, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity/paternity leave? Who has overall responsibility for diversity & inclusion within your organisation? How does your organisation communicate with employees regarding the development of diversity & inclusion procedures and initiatives? Does your organisation have any diversity & inclusion specific targets or objectives? Has your company had any employment tribunal claims brought against it in the past 3 years relating to gender, race, religion or belief, age, disability, sexual orientation or gender reassignment? If you answered “yes” to question 5, please provide details and the action plan(s) your organisation has put in place to prevent recurrence. Do you annually publish your workforce diversity data on race, age, gender, disability, socio-economic background, sexual orientation and gender reassignment status with a breakdown by role and seniority level both internally and externally? If you answered “yes” to question 7, please supply your organisations current monitoring statistics via email to
[email protected]. If you do not currently monitor your employees against these categories, please state the reason why: Figure 3
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CR & Diversity Supplier Report Following the CR audit, the firm’s CR & Diversity team compiles a report that includes scores per section, an overall rating for each supplier and recommendations for suppliers and supplier managers to take forward. This report is shared internally with all Business Services Directors. An example of recommendations for a supplier following the audit can be seen below: Company
Named supplier contact
Simmons & Policy for Simmons improvement Contact
Supplier X
Relevant Person
Relevant Person
Action
Diversity & Inclusion Discuss the importance of monitoring diversity, and to share how we monitor diversity as an example. Diversity & Inclusion Produce a diversity & inclusion policy. Share our policy with supplier contact as an example Environmental Produce an environmental policy and share our policy as an example Environmental Gain accreditation to an environmental standard. Share our action plan as an example. Environmental Discuss how to measure and manage carbon emissions. Share our policy as an example.
Figure 4
The report also includes an analysis of each supplier’s individual overall rating across the audit as well as average scores from the different sections. Comparing the scores to previous years demonstrates the tangible improvement across our supply chain in terms of positive commitment to CR.
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Example: Graph depicting average scores across the audit 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Diversity & inclusion rating 2012
Environment rating 2013
2014
Ethics rating
Third party supplier rating
Total rating
2015
Figure 5
Key Themes emerging from the CR & Diversity Audit By engaging with suppliers in this way we were able to establish that diversity monitoring was often not to the standard that we, as a firm, would recommend. Whilst a number of onsite suppliers were monitoring the diversity of their workforce, very few organisations were monitoring the sexual orientation of their staff, and many expressed concern about doing so. Our CR & Diversity team provided support with comprehensive advice about best practice sexual orientation monitoring, including a template monitoring form which many of the firm’s suppliers have since implemented.
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CR & Diversity Roundtable Events The second part of our supply chain programme involves a CR & diversity roundtable discussion. This follows completion of the audit. Ten suppliers from a range of different sectors are invited. The benefits of this roundtable event are mutual: the ‘Chatham House Rules’ discussion, led by CR experts and key stakeholders from Simmons & Simmons, is driven and enhanced by the diversity of businesses invited to the event. We have found that this cross-sector collaboration significantly benefits our supplier attendees. We have now held six best practice sharing roundtable events focusing on a broad range of topics that are included in our firm’s CR strategy: LGBT equality, gender balance initiatives, charitable giving, social inclusion programmes and environmental sustainability and awareness. Previous agendas for roundtable events can be found below: Speakers Penny Miller Joanna Perry James Clark
Role Partner – Financial Markets, Simmons & Simmons CR & Diversity Manager, Simmons & Simmons Environment & Office Services Manager, Simmons & Simmons
Time 15:30 15.35 15.45 16.05 16.20
Speaker(s) James Clark Joanna Perry Alex Germanis Penny Miller All delegates
16.40
Joanna Perry & James Clark
16.45
All delegates & invited guests
Figure 6
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Description Welcome, background and instructions Social inclusion programmes The sustainable supply chain Gender balance initiatives Co-chaired by Joanna Perry & James Clark, a frank and open discussion about the presentations and how we can work together to embed CR into supply chains: questions for the speakers; examples of best practice; barriers to success; and future developments. Summary of key learning points, suggested actions for the next 12 months Group to be joined by key stakeholders from Simmons & Simmons and its on-site contract teams, an opportunity to enjoy refreshments, further discussions and networking
Speakers Amanda Carpenter Colin Passmore Joanna Perry James Clark
Role Co-Founder Achill Management, Co-Chair LSA Senior Partner, Simmons & Simmons CR & Diversity Manager, Simmons & Simmons Environment & Office Services Manager, Simmons & Simmons
Time 16:00 16:10 16:30 16:45 16.55
Speaker(s) Joanna Perry Colin Passmore Amanda Carpenter Joanna Perry All delegates
17.20
Joanna Perry & James Clark
17:30
All delegates & invited guests
Description Welcome, background and instructions LGBT Strategy: Straight Ally initiative History of the Legal Sustainability Alliance Charitable Giving Co-chaired by Joanna Perry & James Clark, a frank and open discussion about the presentations and how we can work together to embed CR into supply chains: questions for the speakers; examples of best practice; barriers to success; and future developments. Summary of key learning points, suggested actions for the next 12 months Group to be joined by key stakeholders from Simmons & Simmons and its on-site contract teams, an opportunity to enjoy refreshments, further discussions and networking
Figure 7
Quotes from attendees of the roundtable events:
“The Simmons & Simmons supply chain roundtable event was informative and useful on many levels. It was helpful to network with suppliers from different sectors whom we would never usually meet, yet face very similar challenges to us at One Transport. Since the event we have added a fleet of zero-emission electric vehicles to our service offering that are already proving popular with many clients.” – Director of Client Relations, One Transport
“The Simmons & Simmons ‘Supply Chain Roundtable’ was a thoughtprovoking and enjoyable event, with interesting speakers and a mixed group of delegates from other sectors, including transport, catering and security. As one of Simmons’ key suppliers it’s useful for us to have access to their teams and other suppliers to meet common environmental and social objectives.” – CSR Officer, Williams Lea 13
Barristers’ roundtable event In 2015 we extended our commitment to embedding CR & D&I awareness across our supply chain with our first barristers’ roundtable which focused on LGBT equality within the workplace. The session was chaired by our Senior Partner, Colin Passmore, and then LGBT network co-chair, partner David Stone, together with Kris Phelps from Stonewall. Many of the firm’s regularly instructed barristers attended a spirited and thought provoking session.
Internal supplier relationship managers While individual teams and staff are currently responsible for managing their own contractual relationships with suppliers, the firm’s CR & Diversity team leads the on-going engagement to support our suppliers to implement CR and D&I best practice. We recognise that delivering equality through our supply chain is relatively new and many contract managers may not yet feel confident to advise their suppliers and monitor their compliance on D&I. As a firm, we intend to increasingly transfer this responsibility to individual contract managers and support them as they become more familiar and confident with procurement diversity. Our focus on collaborating with suppliers to drive improvement, rather than compliance has noticeably strengthened our relationship with many of our existing providers.
Quote from existing supplier:
“Baxter Storey works in partnership with Simmons & Simmons to improve our environmental performance continuously. They actively seek to build relationships with their ‘third party’ suppliers and we regularly invite our local green suppliers to meet with our customers here at the firm”. – General Manager, Baxter Storey
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Impact Analysis Short term impact As seen in figure 5, the short term impact of our collaborative supply chain management and procurement practices is visible through the improved average scores between 2012 and 2015.
Longer term impact Supporting our suppliers to drive improvement in their commitment to CR and D&I best practice has enabled us to have better relationships with our suppliers. We provide the opportunity for collaboration with our firm and access to knowledge sharing with organisations across a number of sectors at our annual roundtable and other events throughout the year. This relationship benefits our firm, by finding out more about our suppliers and what is important to them and the supplier gains insight into opportunities and options of embedding good CR and D&I practices into business processes.
Further engagement with our suppliers In addition to the annual audit and roundtable events we ensure that our on-site suppliers and contractors have access to the firm’s D&I events and initiatives. All on-site contractors are invited to join the firm’s employee-led network groups, to partake in D&I educational and social events. This has included training about LGBT bullying and harassment delivered by Vicky Wickremeratne, a partner in our Employment team, who is also the co-chair of our Straight Ally network. All onsite contractors are also required to attend mandatory inclusive leadership and unconscious bias training.
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Lessons learned along the way
We have learned to tailor our expectations depending on the type of business needed and the type of supplier involved. You will need to be flexible with smaller businesses that may not have the resources, for example, to commit to community engagement work. Smaller businesses may need extra support, for example, assistance with filling in a tendering document. Therefore a one-sized fits all approach will not work and flexibility is required. However this does not negate the supplier’s legal duties to have suitable policies in place.
It’s important to get to know your suppliers and learn more about what’s important for them. If we had not explored CR with one of our taxi companies we may never have learnt that they work with an electric cars company. We now use this company and it directly supports our environmental sustainability objectives.
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Throughout this guide we have emphasised the need to take a collaborative approach with your suppliers and support them wherever possible. Embedding CR & D&I into your supplier procurement and relationships is not about telling businesses what to do, but rather how both organisations can work together to drive collective improvement.
We recognise that we don’t always have the answers and it’s important for us and our suppliers to learn from each other. The roundtable events have been invaluable and allowed suppliers from different sectors to come together and share good practice. When planning a roundtable event or open discussion with your suppliers it is vital to think about the issues that may be affecting their industry.
Resources UN Global Compact:
https://www.unglobalcompact.org/ Procurement Guide, Stonewall:
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/procurement.pdf Business Action on Supplier Diversity, Business in the Community:
http://www.bitc.org.uk/system/files/business_action_on_supplier_diversity_jan_07.pdf Six ways to support small businesses in your supply chain, Business in the Community:
http://www.bitc.org.uk/blog/post/six-ways-support-small-businesses-your-supply-chain
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