Goals and progress
Supply chain | Helping factories move forward
What’s the most effective way to improve factory working conditions? As our work has evolved, so have our answers.
To date, our Social Responsibility Specialists (SRSs) have been at the heart of our work with factories. They inspect and approve factories before we place orders, and conduct regular announced and unannounced follow-up visits to confirm that the standards outlined in our Code of Vendor Conduct (COVC) are being met.
But over time, we’ve realized that monitoring alone won’t achieve lasting, large-scale improvements in working conditions. Our capacity-building program is focused on working with factories to develop management skills and systems that help prevent problems from arising in the first place — and to increase factory accountability for meeting the standards in our COVC.
We’re still developing our strategy, but key elements of our capacity-building program include:
Evolving our monitoring process to include a thorough review of a factory’s human resource management systems
Working with factories to embed social accountability into their operations by helping them conduct their own performance assessments and take corrective action
Increasing the use of certification programs (for example, SA8000)
Training factories to engage with stakeholders
Collaborating with other brands in the apparel industry to make better use of resources, avoid duplication of efforts and collectively create and share best practices
