Social Sourcing

Service Provider Sustainability Maturity Index

ESG is on every board agenda – and of course it’s in our program.

As an industry we are pretty good at the environmental piece – although more to be done on green data centres, etc -  and have always focused on good governance,  but as a people industry we really need to focus on the Social elements more.

Another example of our move to standardisation, we have developed a standard questionnaire for buyers to use to gauge the ESG performance of their service providers. We saw that all our buy-side members were grappling with what questions to ask of their tier 1 service providers and all service providers were being inundated with questionnaires – all of which were different and often comparing apples with pears.

So with our ESG questionnaire in circulation and under revision, we are reviewing what should come next.

Should the GSA hold the service provider data? Do we move this on to the index to showcase exemplary performers that guide the rest of the industry to excellence. This workstream will explore this journey.

Environment and the Journey to Net Zero

Some service providers are excellent in this and are willing to share their journeys and best practice.

We will build repository of suggestions of what our industry should definitely prioritise and what else it can do – from single use plastic in canteens through to reducing emissions and waste through UYOD schemes.

Our ideal would be for our entire industry to make a collective net zero pledge.

If you are passionate about the environment – then get involved in this workstream.

Impact Sourcing

Working with the GT&BSC we agreed a definition for impact sourcing back in 2021.

In short, Impact sourcing focuses on giving long-term and meaningful employment to disadvantaged individuals around the world.

It is an essential contribution our industry can make to benefit the global population.

We are now working with IAOP’s Centre for Social Impact and exploring the opportunity of developing at least best practice but potentially a standard for impact sourcing.

Supplier Diversity

We will continue our work with the Council of Supplier Diversity UK.

This year we aim to:

Publish tangible research results on where organisations are on their supplier diversity journeys

Publish a best practice guide on how to embark on a supplier diversity program.

Review accreditations – is there a better way than making companies jump through these hoops?

Create a code of conduct for handling diverse suppliers.

Create best practice on how to ensure diverse suppliers are included fairly within the RFP process