Supporting guidelines

The Workplace Standards are a set of rules that our suppliers must abide by, but to illustrate how suppliers should implement our standards, we have created a set of guidelines for use in factory settings. These expand on our Workplace Standards, giving detailed instructions and practical examples for implementation.

The guidelines are also used by our SEA team to:

Guide and evaluate whether a supplier is complying with our Standards
Advise and train our suppliers in improving their performance.

We regularly create new guidelines and revise existing ones. There are currently six guidelines, which are further complemented by specific supplementary materials. The six guidelines are:

Guidelines on Health, Safety and Environment
Guidelines on Employment Standards
Guide to Best Environmental Practice
Worker Cooperative Guidelines
Enforcement Guidelines
Guidelines on Sustainable Compliance.

In the course of 2007, the major components of our guidelines were reviewed and revised. These enhanced guidelines will be formally launched throughout the Group during 2008.

Guidelines on Health, Safety and Environment

The HSE Guidelines are the result of the numerous HSE audits conducted with external specialists since the inception of the SEA programme. The guidelines contain comprehensive written instructions, photographs, charts, symbols and specific examples of good and bad HSE practices. Several language versions are available to suppliers. These guidelines are also complemented by specific supplementary guidance materials.

Guidelines on Employment Standards

The guidelines set out the employment standards, case studies and examples of common non-compliances, suggested systems and solutions for avoiding non-compliance, documentation requirements and relevant international laws. Several language versions are available to suppliers. These guidelines are also complemented by specific supplementary guidance materials.

Guide to Best Environmental Practice

Designed as the third component in managing social and environmental affairs, this guide aims to help our suppliers meet the environmental requirements of our Workplace Standards and move beyond regulatory compliance. The guidance illustrates how to follow sustainable business practices and reduce costs by using energy efficiently, reducing waste and preventing pollution.

Worker Cooperative Guidelines

Our fair wage study uncovered the clear value of workers’ cooperatives so we commissioned two labour NGOs to research and write guidelines on establishing a workers’ cooperative. The guidelines cover key criteria for success and how to avoid common pitfalls.

Enforcement Guidelines

First finalised in 2004, then revised again in 2006 and in 2007, the Enforcement Guidelines cover the principles of enforcement of the Workplace Standards and the range of remedies for breach of standards. Such sanctions or remedies include reducing orders, commissioning third-party investigations and, as a last resort, terminating the manufacturing agreement.

Guidelines on Sustainable Compliance

As stated in the Workplace Standards, we expect our suppliers to deliver continuous compliance improvements in their operations. This means that business partners must internalise compliance and take ownership of their activities that ensure long-term, consistent compliance execution. To internalise the Standards means developing effective systems to manage employment and HSE issues. To maintain these systems management must be engaged and the necessary resources committed.

The Guidelines on Sustainable Compliance were designed to be a reference point for suppliers establishing an internal compliance programme. They were developed in 2004 and introduced to strategic suppliers in mid 2005. The Guidelines define specific performance benchmarks, spread over timelines up to three years that would inform the SEA Key Performance Indicator. In 2006, the Guidelines were primarily applied to core footwear and apparel suppliers who are covered by the Group’s World Class Supply Chain programme.

In 2007, the Guidelines were integrated in other monitoring tools such as the strategic compliance planning tool. The strategic compliance planning tool is increasingly used in the relationship between the Group’s brands, business entities and the supply chain to track, assess and report their respective performance in managing supply chain compliance. By the end of 2007 there were more than 20 plans implemented with business units.

Roll-out of Group-wide policies and standard operating procedures

In 2007, we produced and rolled out detailed information packages about uniform policies and standard operating procedures to all entities of the adidas Group.

Core policies and procedures include:

adidas Group Workplace Standards – our Group-wide principles for fair, safe and healthy working conditions in our supply chain
Factory Approval Policy, which describes the procedures for getting SEA authorisation for all production and suppliers for the Group
Enforcement Guidelines, which describe the approach to enforce the Workplace Standards with our suppliers
Termination Guideline, which describes our approach to ethical termination of suppliers
Fair Factories Clearinghouse procedure, which describes the responsibilities for disclosing and maintaining data in the Group’s supply chain database.

In-depth training was provided to major Group entities in applying these processes and guidelines.

You can download the full versions of these guidelines from our corporate website.