FLA 3.0 - Toward Sustainable Compliance

Innovation, corporate social responsibility,
and holding companies and their factories accountable

Since its inception, the FLA has focused on monitoring factory compliance pursuant to its Workplace Code of Conduct. It has worked hard to ensure that companies affiliated with the FLA not only abide by that Code, but if and when violations are found, to work with their factories and ensure that those violations are quickly corrected. Our role has been to observe and evaluate the practices of our affiliate companies, hold them accountable to our Code of Conduct, and use their market power to improve the conditions of work for workers across the globe.

Now, nearly a decade later, the FLA continues to implement this approach successfully, but also seeks to strengthen and enhance it – to focus even more on means of sustainable compliance that will enhance our capacity to strengthen the behavior of factories. This year, for instance, FLA is introducing an enhanced “C” Licensee monitoring system, updated tracking charts to provide public disclosure of the independent external monitoring (IEM) audits that are conducted, and the development of a Participating Supplier Membership.

Toward sustainable compliance

At the core of FLA’s work as it closes in on its second decade, is an exciting strategy that is both central to and an enhancement of the group’s mission. This new strategy builds on FLA’s experience in independent monitoring and identification of behaviors in factories that do not comply with the FLA Workplace Code of Conduct.

It focuses increasingly on a more comprehensive and inclusive approach, putting even greater emphasis on collaboration among its stakeholders and the principle of sustainable compliance. Years of experience monitoring in hundreds of factories have showed us that monitoring alone is an inadequate tool to create sustainable change in working conditions. For one, the thousands of factories that are used make it virtually impossible to continuously send monitors to each in order to catch noncompliances as they occur. But more significantly, external enforcement of compliance standards through company compliance programs is, at best, an interim measure. The real work takes place at the factory level.

Instead of repeatedly sending in external monitors to catch non-compliant behavior over and over again, the more sensible, progressive, and productive approach is to place our focus on determining why these noncompliances take place in the factory in the first place and building the internal capacity and due diligence necessary to prevent them. We need to support these factories in creating systems that integrate the voice of workers, prevent recurring problems, and establish a means through which to resolve future conflicts or disputes that may emerge in the future. This is where FLA 3.0, the third generation of FLA monitoring is based.

FLA 3.0 represents a shift in the FLA approach that has traditionally focused on brand accountability. Looking to the future, the role of the FLA, our member companies and other local actors, governments, labor groups and human rights advocates will seek to enable and ensure that the factory fulfills this objective. Make no mistake -- we will continue to evaluate brands but the emphasis will shift to one of building greater due diligence, accessibility and accountability of factories.

How FLA 3.0 works

FLA 3.0 leverages multi-stakeholder partnerships to develop capacity for compliance at the factory level. It is an integrated approach to sustainable compliance that pools constituent resources and increases collaboration. Additionally, it focuses on the identification and remediation of root causes of persistent and serious non-compliances so that a more systematic approach can be applied at the supplier level. Finally, it creates opportunities for local stakeholders to play an integral role in identifying priority compliance issues, provide remedial and capacity building services, and assess progress made by suppliers. In coalescing around these goals, this new system will emphasize and measure the progress and the impact of the program, something that our checklist questionnaires have never been able to capture. In this way we hope to both enhance the public reporting and increase the positive contribution to improving workers lives.