Sustainable Suppliers

How do you make sure your company's suppliers are sustainable?

What if you had the suppliers address some questions that will drive their sustainability performance both now and in the future? Here are some questions that might help them address sustainability:

Do you coordinate your operational risk management efforts with your sustainability efforts?
Do you have a business continuity plan that is linked both to your operational risk management program and your sustainability effort?
Do you have an active engagement program that you use to determine the interests of your key stakeholders?
Are you making compliance with legal and other requirements (i.e., environment, health & safety, social and financial) part of how EVERY employee does his or her job every day?
Do you use an integrated management system to make sustainability a key component in how you operate your business rather than having it work as a peripheral activity?
Are you using "leading indicators" (i.e., from a formal operational excellence program) to drive your sustainability efforts instead of relying on the lagging indicators found in the Global Reporting Initiative and other sustainability indices?
Are you scoring the performance you are making on the areas covered by your leading indicators and lagging indicators and reporting your performance to your key stakeholders?
Are you quantifying the continual improvement made within your sustainability program with a single score?
Are all three responsibilities (i.e., environmental stewardship, social equity and well being and financial prosperity) integrated in your sustainability program?
Do you require your contractors and suppliers to adhere to a "Code of Conduct" that helps them operationalize sustainability in their businesses?

For each of these questions, the supplier should provide a written "approach" to the performance category. They should then suggest how they are "deploying" that approach. Next they will provide some of the results (lagging indicators, including those in the sustainability index) of their approach and deployment. Finally they will report on the improvements that have been made in their sustainability effort.

Robert B. Pojasek, Ph.D., is the sustainability practice leader at Capaccio Environmental Engineering and an internationally recognized expert on the topic of business sustainability and process improvement.

www.rockenvironmental.com