“Code of Conduct, that’s for companies working overseas.”
“We’re a small family run business, we treat our people right.”
“My door is always open – anyone has a problem, they can come right in.”
“I can’t afford compliance, my margins are too slim.”
“I can’t do all that compliance stuff, I don’t have the people.”
Yes, you can.
You can adopt a Code of Conduct.
You can implement a compliance program to make the Code a reality.
You can meet the expectations of your customers and concerned stakeholders.
And you don’t need the budget and staff of a large Participating Company. It may not be as easy as you would like, but it isn’t as hard as you fear.
Looking at this Compliance Tool Kit you may throw up your hands and say, “I can’t do all this.” We’re not asking you to. We are not asking you to adopt each and every tool. And we are not asking you to do it all at once.
We are not asking you to become look-a-like compliance clones. We are asking you to think about each tool and the purpose it serves.
I. Tools for Action --Tools for Thinking
These are tools to stimulate your thinking about compliance:
If you aren’t able to implement that tool at this time, can you do something else within your means that will achieve the same end, the same purpose?
The Tool Kit challenges you to think about what Code compliance should be for your particular company and its production and sourcing situation.
Think of the Kit not as end but a means: if a particular means does not work for you, then what else can you do to achieve the same end.
Keep in mind the purpose the tool serves - adapt the tool or come up with a functional equivalent that serves the same purpose.
Think of a compliance program as a car. We are asking all Category C Licensees to drive a smooth running car. Some have a VW and some have a Mercedes. Some own one car parked right outside in the garage; some own several cars in garages all over town. Others lease a fleet of cars all over the country, and some lease a fleet all over the world that they use only a few times a year. We can’t tell each car owner how exactly to tune the car so that it runs smoothly.
But are there are some basic principles of car maintenance, some basic tools that will work for everyone or at least suggest alternatives to accomplish the same goal. Each licensee will have to do the same basic maintenance on their cars – owned or leased – and this will mean that your tools should perform the same function.
You need to develop tools and a maintenance plan and procedures. You can’t leave it to luck and good weather.
II. Spec’ing the Kit
To help you get your thinking started about compliance programs, here are the specs or key principles underlying the development and direction of the Kit:
Compliance is a standard part of running an effective business.
Compliance is not a special activity layered on top of the company’s regular business. Compliance is not a deep mystery or nuclear physics: it is simply an extension of good management practices. They are part of the same whole. They are both part of what it means to run your business effectively. You do not have good management in one corner and compliance in another:
This is especially true at the facility level – there is not a normal way of hiring employees and then an additional set of hiring activities termed “compliance activities”. A facility should check and maintain independent documentation of a worker’s age, provide an understandable explanation of the facility’s code and policies and procedures, and keep an organized personnel file for all employees. These are just good business practices - with or without the presence of FLA requirements.
A compliance program is the sum of common sense decisions.
Compliance is built with common sense actions that follow one from the other. Together these interconnected actions form a program.
Ask yourself what a reasonable person would expect and you will find that the steps to take are clear. For example:
• If you want your employees or the companies that produce your goods to do what you and your customers want, you have to put it in writing – you need a code. You can develop your own code or use the FLA’s.
• Once you have a code, you have to make the code available to your workers and managers. This means that you have to create an informed workplace.
• Then you need some process to make sure the requirements of your code are met and this means some type of audit.
• To do an audit, you need trained people and instruments.
• And if your auditors find problems, you have to come up with a way to fix them and verify that the fixes have been done.
Each step suggests the next. One action leads to others all in a reasonable progression of operational building blocks that together form a “compliance program.”
The whole company needs to own compliance.
Like any other aspect of your business -- the quality of your product or the treatment of your customers -- compliance begins at the top of the company and is integrated throughout company and facility operation, from senior staff to the responsibilities of individual workers on the production floor.
Compliance cannot be the responsibility of one small team of managers – it cannot be likened to Internal Affairs in a police department, whose job it is to ferret out malfeasance. Don’t get mislead: factory compliance is a misnomer. A compliance program must be a company compliance program of which the factory is only a part.
The company compliance program should encourage facility compliance.
The company should by its compliance requirements encourage the very facility practices it wishes to monitor. For example, an accident log is both an instrument for the facility to manage its safety program and for the company to manage its compliance auditing activities. This tool can make both the lives of auditors and factory managers easier. Again, the point is to integrate compliance into standard business practices and not have it stand out as a burdensome addition to “my job.”
The Tool Kit is built on the obligations of FLA companies
The Kit is built around the obligations of FLA companies {need link] rather than the Workplace Code of Conduct because we want to help licensees focus on constructing a compliance program first and foremost – a structured way of approaching compliance.
Licensees can get to the particulars of the Code more easily through existing FLA documents, for example the Compliance Benchmarks {need link]. While the Tool Kit speaks, for example, about factory health and safety standards, it focuses more on tools that the factory and company can use to make sure these standards are met. It is easier for a licensee to find out what good procedures are for chemical storage and handling than it is to think about how to organize the audit process to make sure these procedures are in place.
The obligations of FLA companies are:
- Adopt and communicate a code.
- Train internal compliance staff.
- Provide employees with confidential reporting channels.
- Conduct internal monitoring.
- Submit to independent external monitoring (IEM)
- Collect and manage compliance information.
- Remediate in a timely manner.
- Take all steps necessary to prevent persistent forms of noncompliance.
- Consult with civil society.
- Pay dues and meet other procedural requirements.
The tools of this Compliance Kit are organized around each of the obligations of FLA companies. Some tools are general in concept – more blueprints about issues to consider and approaches to take – and are presented directly to help you plan your program. Others include examples of specific, free-standing documents and by clicking on them you will be guided to them. In addition, there is specific guidance for licensees on special issues such as subcontracting and the use of migrant workers.
As you develop and implement your compliance program, you don’t need to go from one element to the other in the order they are presented. Visualize the tools as stepping stones around a field rather than steps one after the other leading up a hill – you can decide where to go depending on your needs.
The Tool Kit Is Not Exhaustive
The Took Kit is not intended to give you examples of every possible tool or address every workplace code compliance issue you might face. That’s not possible -- compliance is an art not a science. There are no easy formulas. There are no blueprints. There are however practices that have worked for others that can work for you.
The Tools are Means Not Ends
The tools serve particular functions that a compliance program should address.
Looking at your own particular situation and your own organizational environment, you will have to decide how to apply the tools. Keep in mind the purposes served by each Principle as you creatively and critically apply the tools to your own situation.
III. Who Me?
Some licensees have chosen or will choose to contract out auditing to professional auditing firms. If your company is one, don’t think that this Tool Kit is not for you and that it can gather virtual dust in the recesses of the FLA Website.
Your company still needs to own compliance. It still needs to have established the foundation for a successful audit and to follow up after an audit has been completed to ensure that a facility makes the required steps to bring itself into compliance. The Tool Kit can help you carry out these and other responsibilities.
The audit itself is just one point in a company’s commitment to compliance. It is a contained set of activities. A company that contracts out these activities still must:
• Communicate to its employees and suppliers the importance of compliance.
• Create an informed workplace in its own facilities.
• Integrate compliance considerations throughout its business operations, especially the selection of its suppliers.
• Make sure that facilities take remedial action.
• Maintain a database on facility compliance performance.
• Ensure that its suppliers live up to written compliance certifications and agreements.
What goes on in facility between audits is your company’s responsibility: your goods are there, your reputation not just the quality of the goods you sell are on the line. You will need to keep your fingers on the pulse of the factory through your staff whose jobs take them into these facilities. Contracted auditors or not, you will need to give employees at these facilities the opportunity to report their concerns and allegations about Code noncompliance to your company. You will need people on staff with the responsibility to make sure that the auditors do their job and that top management in your company is kept informed of what the auditors find.
Your responsibility as an FLA licensee company is to have a compliance program. As the Tool Kit will make clear, the facility audit is only one part of that program. So if you plan to contract out that one part, please keep reading …