Representatives from more than 80 businesses, including SMEs and FTSE100 companies, turned out for the 2024 Slave-Free Alliance Conference, sponsored by Exiger. Slave-Free Alliance is Hope for Justice’s wholly owned social enterprise that helps businesses and other organisations to address the risk of labour exploitation or modern slavery in their operations and supply chains.
This year’s event, ‘A Global Forum for Change’, focused on the importance of OECD’s Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct, being ‘proactive not reactive’ in addressing human rights risks, shared learning on assessing and mitigating risks, and equipping businesses to respond to upcoming legislation.
There was also plenty of opportunity for networking, with an emphasis on collaboration. Guest speakers included employees from John Lewis Partnership, SSE Renewables, Exiger, Tony’s Chocolonely and VF Corporation, which owns retail brands Timberland, North Face and VANS.
Marc Stanton (pictured above), Director of Slave-Free Alliance (SFA), said: “We had a fantastic turnout for this year’s SFA Conference, with attendees from businesses of all sizes and across all sectors, including some of the UK’s FTSE100 companies. The Slave-Free Alliance Conference is the highlight of our year; it epitomises what Slave-Free Alliance is about – we are an alliance. We know that this is a complex topic and we need as many insights and examples of best practice as we can get, and then to understand and share those among businesses so that we can collaborate and take action. It really is going to take a monumental effort across the board to improve the situation for workers in our supply chains.”
There were more than 120 attendees at the conference, which was held at King’s House Conference Centre in Manchester on Thursday 21st November.
The why behind the what
Marc Stanton officially opened the conference, followed by a welcome from Tim Nelson (pictured), CEO of Slave-Free Alliance and Hope for Justice, global anti-slavery charity. SFA is a not-for-profit social enterprise, with all profits reinvested into Hope for Justice’s work to prevent exploitation, bring freedom from modern slavery and to reform society.
Tim Nelson shared about the journey that Hope for Justice and SFA have been on over the past 16 years, starting out as a group of 10 who had one of their first meetings at the conference venue, with Hope for Justice growing to reach just under 150,000 people through its work last year, whilst SFA is celebrating bringing on its 17th member of the FTSE100.
He said: “I want to thank you all for your commitment. My hope is that we are moving one day closer to living in a world free from slavery. We have seen through the work that we are doing at SFA and Hope for Justice that direct support can literally create a different future for tomorrow for so many individuals. My hope today is that you will go away informed, educated and with a sense of what action you need to take to address the issue of modern slavery. I count it an absolute privilege that you are here.”
‘Businesses have critical role to play in ending modern slavery’, says Anti-Slavery Commissioner
Eleanor Lyons, the UK’s Anti-Slavery Commissioner, praised attendees for their commitment to addressing modern slavery in supply chains. Speaking via pre-recorded video, she said: “I appreciate that many of you here, industry leaders, experts and SFA members, are personally very passionate about addressing this issue and making it a priority for you and the organisations you work for. I commend you for coming together today to share your learning and expertise […]. We must make sure that we are doing all that we can to address the scourge of modern slavery.” She continued: “Businesses and industries have a “critical role to play in ending modern slavery. It is extremely unlikely that any business is completely free of modern slavery.” She called on businesses “not to distance themselves from high-risk suppliers but to work collaboratively with them and to ensure workers are not subject to forced labour and are receiving the protections they deserve.”
Three key objectives
SFA’s three main objectives for the day, based on feedback from members, were to make the conference practical, to inform on upcoming legislation, and to promote collaboration. This meant that the conference was full of real-world insights and experiences of what some businesses have found challenging and have been able to put into practice. Attendees were encouraged to follow international standards, with each presentation linked to an OECD Due Diligence step. There were also several opportunities throughout the day for networking, round-table discussions, Q&As and group feedback.
The keynote speech was delivered by Rachel Hartley, Consultancy Director for Slave-Free Alliance. She spoke on the importance of integrating OECD Due Diligence to prepare for upcoming legislation in the UK and Europe as well as the UN Global Compact Network UK. She stressed the importance of each person having a role to play: “Accountability is not confined to one individual. It is everyone’s business, so take ownership, whether you are one of our key contacts in a member business, or a stakeholder in a business working with us, let’s commit to these frameworks.”
The SFA team also talked about the importance of having leadership buy-in to “invigorate motivation, increase awareness and to send a message right through the business that this is vitally important.”
Responsible business management
Guest speaker Amy Morris, Ethics and Sustainability Manager, Human Rights, at John Lewis Partnership, shared how the retailer worked with SFA over the past two years to look at where in their operations and logistics there might be risks of modern slavery or labour exploitation. SFA worked with John Lewis Partnership to map out their ‘Goods Not For Resale’ (GNFR) operations and undertake a comprehensive programme of activity to visit the majority of UK operational sites.
Another session saw guest speaker Matthew Hibberd, Senior Director – Distribution for global apparel company VF Corporation, share about how they worked with SFA to identify the areas of greatest risk within their operations, conducted a risk assessment and developed an action plan for how to create meaningful change and impact. SFA worked with VF Corporation to carry out a site assessment at its new UK logistics site in Leicester, where about 400 people, both agency staff and VF employees, are working. This involved a site tour and external observations, management discussions, worker discussions, and a document and processes review.
Matthew said: “It was about advocacy for us. We needed to start somewhere and we were hearing lots about the challenges we faced and people finding lots of reasons not to do these things. I’m a big advocate for finding reasons why we should do things. It was really important to my site leadership team. We felt strongly about protecting our workers and their families.”
Attendees heard from guest speakers Martha Selwyn, Social Impact Lead at SSE Renewables, Jon Ball, Managing Director and Head of Delivery for Exiger Government Solutions, and Belinda Borck, Impacticular Storyteller and Chocolonely Foundation Manager for Tony’s Chocolonely.
Belinda led a roundtable session that helped businesses to think through the risk of reputational damage associated with finding modern slavery in their supply chain and navigating remedy. This session promoted transparency and openness between businesses and prompted discussions around what to do and how to respond to live breaking news stories.
Exhibitor spotlight
ES3G were on hand as an exhibitor, demonstrating their simple and innovative app, Ask the Workers, which allows businesses to monitor worker voice and human rights in their supply chains in real time.
Reaction and key takeaways
Daphning Pierre, Supply Chain Sustainability Manager at National Grid, said: “We have been working with SFA since 2023 and so far it has been really helpful to work on our due diligence process, especially our risk assessments. We work with all the partners in the UK to support our strategy to delivering our modern slavery commitment, and SFA has been extremely supportive of our strategy. It has been very interesting to hear from my peers in the utility sector, but specifically around the due diligence, mainly the OECD framework where you have got to identify the risk and mitigate the risk and work with your whole team to do this. One of the key takeaways for me is how you get the buy-in from senior leaders so that it is something they really want to embed into the business.”
Marc Stanton said: “One of the key themes that came out of the day was for businesses to have courage to truly examine where their risks of modern slavery and labour exploitation could be. Every business will have different takeaways from the day; it could be assessing risk, it could be how they look after their workforce, it could be how they are going to get senior leadership buy-in into this topic, but my biggest hope is that everyone leaves with two or three key actions, either different ways of working, or starting something new.”
