Total Sustainability. Assured.
An organisation looking to create a sustainable workforce must ensure that they are respecting human rights throughout their business. In this episode of Total Sustainability in Progress, Elma Christian, Intertek’s Business Development Director, and Jenna Pires, Senior Manager, discuss the key aspects of establishing sustainability in company culture and the workforce that supports it.
Intertek’s new Corporate Sustainability People & Culture certification standard helps verify the systems and processes that an organisation has in place which assure a more sustainable workforce. Aspects of the standard include a focus on attracting, training, and retaining talent, as well as, demonstrating a supportive company culture which promotes transparency and fairness. Listen to this episode of Total Sustainability in Progress to learn more about sustainable practices for people and culture.
Social Media: LinkedIn | Twitter
Links: Corporate Sustainability Risk Management Certification | Operational Sustainability
Listen to all of Total Sustainability in Progress and share your thoughts on sustainability!
Follow us on- Intertek's Assurance In Action || Twitter || LinkedIn.
Total Sustainability. Assured.
An organisation looking to create a sustainable workforce must ensure that they are respecting human rights throughout their business. In this episode of Total Sustainability in Progress, Elma Christian, Intertek’s Business Development Director, and Jenna Pires, Senior Manager, discuss the key aspects of establishing sustainability in company culture and the workforce that supports it.
Intertek’s new Corporate Sustainability People & Culture certification standard helps verify the systems and processes that an organisation has in place which assure a more sustainable workforce. Aspects of the standard include a focus on attracting, training, and retaining talent, as well as, demonstrating a supportive company culture which promotes transparency and fairness. Listen to this episode of Total Sustainability in Progress to learn more about sustainable practices for people and culture.
Social Media: LinkedIn | Twitter
Links: Corporate Sustainability Risk Management Certification | Operational Sustainability
Listen to all of Total Sustainability in Progress and share your thoughts on sustainability!
Follow us on- Intertek's Assurance In Action || Twitter || LinkedIn.
Hello, and welcome to total sustainability in progress. Enter text podcast for companies committed to a more sustainable future today, our topic will be sustainable business for people in culture. I'm joined by my colleagues, Elma, Christian, who is the business development director for business assurance, supplier management, as well as Jenna Paris, who is the senior manager for business assurance innovation Elma. Jenna, how are you doing today? You're doing good. Great. Uh, so, uh, I'll start this off with a little bit of an introduction. So, uh, Elma, what is your experience in the industry and what do you do with Enertech? Uh, also Jenna, you can jump in after her.
Speaker 2:Sure. Uh, hi Seth. Um, well I joined in the 15 years ago and I currently work as a business development director with, uh, business assurance, supplier management. So my responsibility is to grow our supply chain assurance activities across diverse industries, stakeholders, and sectors. Well, that means I, I leverage really this experience to help organizations identify our products and services that really work best with them, helping them effectively manage their supply chain. Challenges is also corporate sustainability objectives. Uh, I am Nate native to Boston. Yeah. And I had lived there during the Bosnian war. So I think this experience really has been a driver for me, for my life goal to contribute to protection of human rights.
Speaker 3:Great.
Speaker 4:Hi, hi, imagine appearance. And I'm currently a senior manager underneath the, uh, business assurance innovation group, and this means designing and implementing new products and services, which will meet our customers current and future needs. And this brand new total sustainability assurance service is one that I am particularly proud of. Uh, my, uh, background and specialty and enter tech is, is, uh, assessing working conditions of the supply chain. So, and in addition to my, uh, 13 years at Enertech working in the area of CSR, I also have a master of international affairs with a special emphasis on human rights from Columbia university.
Speaker 1:Great. So a few weeks ago, Intertek launched a total sustainability assured you, you, you kind of touched on that. Um, one of the standards within the corporate sustainability offering is people and culture. Uh, so with that being published, what exactly does the standard address?
Speaker 4:Well, uh, the people and culture standard, uh, it's really about having the workers heart and soul in mind. It is looking at establishing what a sustainable does to support, uh, support employees. And one major element revolves around what may one may consider as the human resources, which includes the components of qualification training and employee engagement. So qualification and training is, is evaluating the mechanisms in place of how a company ensures that employees have the competence to perform the jobs that are assigned to them. For example, do you have job descriptions, you know, your performance review practices or talents, assessments, things like that. And it also looks at how they provide the training and the retraining needed for their assigned tasks. And then it moves you even further to see how it values employees by providing support, to advance professional development and enhance learning beyond their current tasks. For example, to expand their professional careers, um, say pursue an advanced degree or just training for some type of advanced skill and then employee engagement. That's looking at the processes in place for communication, uh, with employees and looking about how you communicate to them about your overarching vision mission and, and, and relay the strategies governing the business. And it also examines what steps a company has taken to establish certain behavior and cultural, uh, expectations and how it engages employees by focusing on talent retention, rewards recognition programs that that company utilizes including, um, succession planning at the highest levels of the organization. And lastly, just making sure that the organization has been an effective grievance mechanism in place for employees to safely raise concerns.
Speaker 1:How can those human resources aspects of the people and culture standard help an organization sustainability goals?
Speaker 2:Well that, um, sustainability sustainability starts with the people behind the scenes. So we believe that HR function is really critical to achieving success in a sustainability driven organization because the company culture is a set of values, beliefs, underlining, assumptions, and assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors. It's almost like an unwritten handbook of being an employee of the company. Sustainable performance includes the human element. So in its cornerstones are passion and learning and please the feel connected. We believe to the mission, we'll maintain energy levels and enthusiasm directed toward the mission. So what we find is that one of the major distinguishing features of a sustainable organization, and one of the most powerful factors for their success is having the sustainable workforce because sustainable workforce is stable it's and committed to the organization and its goals and objectives. Uh, these, uh, component of the standard, the employee engagement, um, really evaluates how the organization ensures effective communication with employees, how they develop behavioral and organizational culture, how they manage talent, attraction, and retention, and how they implement effective mechanisms for employee grievance process. So the reasoning really behind this is to improve employees wellbeing, and also integrating them into a company to make it more seamless. And the reason is what this does is really gives them employees more attention. It makes them feel valued and appreciated. So the outcome of this is improved productivity, happiness, loyalty, and a lower turnover rate. Um, when they look at the qualification and training, um, component of the standard, it helps organizations evaluate how they prepare and support their employees, how they ensure competence to perform their assigned tasks in accordance with the organizational needs. And also this includes succession planning, which is very important. Uh, we believe that this is fund fundamental, um, to sustainable implementation of their organizational goals because this continual development and growth really matters to an organization. And that includes individuals personal development, no matter how stable in organization, maybe today, we know eventually things may change. So managers may turn over, um, executive leadership tenures might, might end, um, business processes and needs will eventually evolve. A sustainable organization will we'll be prepared and we'll have processes in place. And such processes will benefit the organization by ensuring their organizational sustainability. It will help mitigate, uh, general organizational risks. It will help them increase resiliency and capacity to survive negative events, build bench depth and internal capacity, minimize potential crisis of an unplanned absence and really identify organizational gaps that they might have in human resource coverage.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned the human resources components. So what other components are a part of this standard?
Speaker 4:Well, then the standard kind of shifts into kind of broader worker issues related to human rights and worker health and wellness. And this is impacting not only their own employees, but also workers and the companies peripherals such as those employed by their partners. And by that we need something like their outsourced service providers, because they have outsource it staff or transportation company that they're using or using an outsource cleaning agency, or you have a canteen and those workers are coming from another organization. Um, those are, are, um, also, you know, in scope here. And then of course, down to the supply chain. So in the standard, we start big with an assessment of the company's commitment to human rights. Then we help to ensure it is defined, it's communicated and acknowledged across their own operations, including those business partners and throughout the supply chain, whenever that's applicable. And this includes, you know, a due diligence process designed to identify, prevent mitigate impacts on human rights. And then we dive deeper and focus on specific areas, which are most interest to sustainability practitioners, such as, uh, labor practices. So the intent of this component is to evaluate how well the organization implements systems, which protect employees against denial of regular and overtime pay compensation or benefits, you know, excessive working hours, um, unfair to duct actions, uh, harassment, abuse, um, and the, uh, I would say the breadth of freedom of association, for example. So we also look to see what risk assessments and processes are in place specific to address the issue of recruitment practices and modern slavery. These two, um, uh, you know, issues of forced labor or where the external stakeholders expectations are quite high and can get quite complex as you dive into the supply chain and, um, looking at your outsource cleaning agencies and transport workers, et cetera. So an effective due diligence program needs to be established in order to minimize unfair hiring practices and those hidden aspects of forced labor. So the organization should also ensure that they have non-discriminatory practices in their recruitment, their hiring, a training, their promotion, that termination. Um, and this is complimented by a clear communication strategy and messaging related to diversity targets and goals, and actively promoting diversity at all levels of the organization. And the last component is about worker health and wellness. So it starts with evaluating the mechanism that the organization is using to address factors such as work environment, suitability access to outdoors and fitness ergonomics, the mental health support, flexible schedules, work, life balance, and even access to healthy food options. And then the standard covers employees understanding of workplace hazards, including their own contributions and responsibilities for safety. For example, we would expect the organization has a mechanism to perform hazard assessments on its processes at facilities and mitigate or eliminate hazards wherever possible. And to have say an emergency response plan, for example. And again, the includes is not only your own operations, but how you measure and track this across your supply chain. And lastly, um, this standard ends with just meeting basic employee needs. So this includes potable water and sanitary restroom facilities, and these things that are provided for the common use of workers to make sure that the equipment of such places are properly maintained. And we seek to ensure a healthy, indoor work environment, you know, free of indoor contaminants and other factors related to air or noise or temperature lighting, those things, which can negatively impact the work environment.
Speaker 1:So how do the mentioned, uh, human rights related components, uh, that Jenna outlines, uh, help with an organization's sustainability goals? Exactly
Speaker 2:Right. That's so it's trying to say what her health and wellness really looks at organizations, processes, uh, evaluating whether they established and maintained both workplace health and safety and healthy working environment to support their worker wellbeing. Because of that, we know that improving human condition within an organization and within supply chain leads to improve performance, satisfaction, retention, profitability, and longterm health and studies have shown that workplace wellness programs resulted in a work workforce with fewer injuries, but also better work performance. We've seen greater satisfaction with their work life and for what that means for employers, um, employers that typically offer such programs, uh, will see greater output. They will see improved employee retention. We see, hi I'm Raul and, and also over health insurance and disability costs. So we conclude that workplace wellness programs enhance working conditions to support employees. And as a result, they support the overall health of the organization, which in turn enhances organization's commitment to sustainability. So sustainability is about identifying and managing business impacts on people, both positive and negative. So human rights create conditions essential for sustainable development in the pursuit of economic growth, through employment creation and income generation. You know, these should be balanced without, with sorry, protection for basic rights of workers because safe, respectful workplace practices can result in higher morale and job satisfaction. And they also foster creativity and innovation, um, including greater cohesion among organizational members, uh, commitment to a common purpose, hope for success, resilience, knowledge sharing, and collaborative capacity, uh, UN global compact, but disciplines. For example, rank supply chain practices is the biggest challenge to improving their sustainability performance at the human rights component of our standards, we will get the weather organization ensure respect for human rights, uh, family brand recruitment practice, uh, diversity, and non-discrimination prohibition of modern slavery in its operations, but also through down the supply chain. And mark, this is important is because it drives a culture of leading corporate citizen, including mentoring and engaging with supply chain partners with a compatible commitment and culture, and by doing so, this promotes a broader understanding within the organization of how decisions, how decisions made beyond procurement can really affect the supply chain.
Speaker 1:So how does this standard supplement, uh, an organization's existing programs for human rights and ethical supply chains and, uh, anything of that nature?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I know a few of the listeners might be thinking that they are already doing some of these components. You know, they are educating and training their employees. Um, you may have a labor rights policy or a supplier code of conduct then perhaps you're even already auditing your supply chain. And these often these, uh, items are often treated as kind of independent functional tasks. And what this standard does is it brings together all of the elements into an overarching assessment of a company's approach to sustainability and evaluates them in terms of the value and effectiveness of the actions. So any tech is not prescribing exactly what actions that company must take in order to meet a rigid, uh, compliance requirement. You know, one thing we had Intertek have learned from our interactions with many different companies is that everybody does things differently and each organization knows, you know, what's works best for them. We are just stating what's the intent is and asking the organization to prove during an audit, that's a policy and mechanism that they have chosen for implementation is effective to meet that intent. And we also have subject matter experts to advise on what actions could be implemented and to share best practices. So in essence, it allows companies to showcase. They have a verified mechanism for establishing a holistic process as an organization and their performance in driving sustainable practices throughout their core operations and value chain.
Speaker 2:Instead, they see companies using this assurance tool to assess and measure their own suppliers and their own business partners. It is hard for a buying organization to get a holistic view of another company approach to sustainability without really diving into their operating systems. So by asking your business partners to take part in this evaluation, by assessing their own operations and their own supply chain, we believe you will have better confidence in your own sustainability story.
Speaker 1:Uh, thank you, Alma. Thank you, Jenna, uh, for, uh, taking the time to discuss this today and, uh, thank you for listening to total sustainability and progress, uh, to learn more about, uh, inter tech sustainability, uh, please visit us at intertek.com/sustainability. Uh, also please subscribe to total sustainability in progress, wherever you listen to podcasts. And also please feel free to follow us on our social media channels on LinkedIn and Twitter, uh, as well as, uh, Facebook and YouTube. So, uh, those links will also be in the description of this podcast.