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Blog | Thursday March 15, 2018

The Women’s Empowerment Principles in Practice: Analyzing One Year of Data

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This year, the level of corporate engagement in International Women’s Day (IWD) was unprecedented. Companies marked the day seemingly everywhere: ANN announced it achieved its milestone of empowering 100,000 women across its supply chain; others, like Pottery Barn, launched special-edition products celebrating women whose proceeds benefit BSR’s HERproject. Still others, including Swarovski, launched collaborations and campaigns to bring visibility to those women across society who are often forgotten.

One week after IWD, we are releasing new insights on the extent to which companies are taking steps internally to integrate a gender lens into their policies, programs, metrics and reporting. To date, 1,800 companies have signed onto the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs); the WEPs Global Trends Report, which we authored in close collaboration with the partners of the tool, reviews the aggregate practices of companies that have used the WEPs Gap Analysis Tool. Developed to give companies guidance on how to implement the WEPs, the tool is a joint project of the UN Global Compact, UN Women, the Multilateral Investment Fund of the IDB, and the Inter-American Investment Corporation, and is supported by the BSR, Governments of Japan and Germany, The Coca-Cola Company, Itaipu, and KPMG.

This first trends report provides a snapshot of corporate performance—across the WEPs categories of leadership, workplace, marketplace, and community—on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Here are some of the key findings on how companies are managing these critical issues:

• Leadership: A majority of companies—69 percent—have a commitment from their leadership on gender equality and women’s empowerment, while only 32 percent have an organization-wide gender equality strategy.
• Workplace: 45 percent of companies have a policy addressing equal pay for work of equal value, and 15 percent are setting goals to build the pipeline of women in management positions.
• Marketplace: 12 percent of businesses include gender equality criteria in supplier management tools; only 5 percent of companies have set procurement targets for women-owned businesses.
• Community: 52 percent embed gender in philanthropic, advocacy, and partnership efforts, while only 10 percent assess differential impacts on men and women during human rights or social impact assessments.

The data show there is a lot of opportunity for companies to translate their commitments into policies and programs that support concrete action.

If you’re looking to better understand your company’s performance on these issues, taking the WEPs tool is a great first step. 

Let’s make sure we continue to celebrate and focus on women’s advancement well beyond a single day or month.

Blog | Wednesday March 14, 2018

Sustainability Management for a Rapidly Changing World: Q&A with Maersk Group’s Annette Stube

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In the spring of 2017, we spoke with a number of our members about how sustainability is managed within their companies, including what is working and what isn’t. These conversations informed our report Redefining Sustainable Business: Management for a Rapidly Changing World, which presents our blueprint for creating resilient business strategies.

Annette Stube, head of sustainability at Maersk, shared her insights on the role of the sustainability team, sustainability risks for the company, and how to measure impact.

Charlotte Bancilhon: What are your main opportunities and challenges related to the integration of sustainability into Maersk’s corporate strategy?

Annette Stube: Maersk is implementing a new sustainability strategy following organizational change. Maersk is a 120-year-old conglomerate with many different kinds of businesses. Today, we are refocusing our business on transport and logistics, spinning off our industrial and oil and gas businesses. In light of this change, Maersk has developed new corporate strategy, which leverages the synergies between businesses. We aim to be a global integrator of container logistics.

This is a good time to be speaking about sustainability at Maersk. We have shaped our sustainability priorities to support this corporate strategy. The priorities include our historic corporate responsibility agenda, which is focused on mitigating negative impacts, but they also include how Maersk can contribute to solving sustainability mega-challenges like climate change, food loss, and informal trade barriers, which prevent thousands of companies in developing countries from accessing international supply chains.

Bancilhon: How has your materiality assessment helped you in this process?

Stube: We conduct a materiality assessment every year. We have used the outcome of our enterprise risk management process to inform our sustainability materiality assessment. This has been hugely valuable, as we are able to distinguish between what is a business risk and what is not and manage it accordingly. Executives get tired of hearing that all sustainability issues are risks, and really, they are not. We may still want to handle them, but for other reasons.

For example, the sulfur oxide emissions (SoX) from our ships have impacts on coastal population’s health. New regulations capping SoX are timely. We have supported this legislation, but it will be very costly in terms of compliant fuel, and currently there is no enforcement mechanism. Savings of between US$700,000 and US$1 million for a single trip between Asia and Europe by using non-compliant fuel could be tempting for some. The real business risk therefore is that without an enforcement mechanism, we might be put at a real competitive disadvantage.

Bancilhon: How do you measure the impact of your sustainability efforts?

Stube: For our sustainability programs, we define value both for our company and for society. For example, our programs around enabling trade provide growth for Maersk and economic development for society as a whole. We keep this duality in mind, and our programs need to deliver on both objectives.

A few years ago, we wanted to look at measuring our impact. We were able to define indicators related to process, but we have still yet to fully crack the code in terms of defining indicators related to the actual larger societal impacts of our efforts. For the business, value creators include growth, cost reduction, brand building, and employee engagement. It is very useful to measure the return-on-investment of our programs but remains difficult to put exact numbers on it.

Bancilhon: Does your sustainability reporting support improved sustainability performance?

Stube: Sustainability reporting makes a lot of sense to us. Reporting has an effect to solidify program management. Applying a reporting regime gives us the same understanding across the business. Reporting on program outcomes pushes teams toward high quality outcomes.  

Bancilhon: What is the role of the sustainability team in all of this?

Stube: The scope of the sustainability team is evolving. My team needs to have deep sustainability knowledge on the well-known issues, but sustainability people are also ‘translating’ what is happening in society to the company—and vice versa. For this, new competencies are needed. These teams will increasingly not only be people mitigating environmental impacts, but people with a different understanding of global economies and how we as a company can play a role in solving the larger problems. It goes way beyond, for example, environmental expertise to find ways of supporting economic development and job creation. It can mean doing business in a slightly different way to make trade more inclusive or being involved with a new set of stakeholders to develop the markets. This is a really exciting transition, although we must continue to be on top of the more well-known agenda as well.

We invite our member companies and other interested stakeholders to engage with us and continue to shape the future of sustainable business through our Redefining Sustainable Business event series this year. Please visit our calendar for the most up-to-date information about events in your region.

Reports | Tuesday March 13, 2018

Financial Needs of Garment Workers in India

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For 10 years, BSR’s HERproject has led programs aimed at unlocking the full potential of women working in global supply chains through workplace programs promoting health, financial inclusion, and gender equality.

This report examines the opportunity to expand financial inclusion for women in India’s garment sector by increasing women’s access to and use of mobile financial products and services. By doing so, it will be possible to fulfill the promise of financial inclusion to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment, improve livelihoods, and spur economic growth.

Our research indicates that mobile financial services provide several benefits that can increase women’s use of formal financial services. Some of these benefits are convenience, safety, privacy, and access to more sophisticated services. But to realize these opportunities, women need to be connected to these products and services and trained on how to use them. Furthermore, companies must develop products and services that suit women’s needs specifically.

Blog | Monday March 12, 2018

Climate Change, Public Health, Women’s Empowerment, and Supplier Performance in Bangladesh

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From May to September, the monsoon in Bangladesh brings tropical rains, muddy roads, and a kind of shocking humidity that makes your clothes stick to your skin. In addition to causing extreme temperatures, the monsoon’s heavy rains fill streets and seep into buildings, turning factories and residential areas into breeding grounds for mosquitos and water-borne diseases.

In Dhaka, one of the cities where BSR’s HERproject, a collaborative initiative that strives to empower low-income women working in global supply chains, operates, health research shows that diseases spike during extreme weather events. In garment factories, the humidity, combined with the heat and fabric dust emitted by the sewing machines, makes breathing difficult. These conditions exhaust workers’ energy and focus, affecting their efficiency and productivity, which in turn may also be affecting the performance of the readymade garment sector.

Rising temperatures and more frequent flooding events are likely to increase with climate change, and in Bangladesh, this will affect the lives of the 4 million people working in the garment industry. These employees are disproportionately women, which is one reason why empowering women to lead on building climate resilience is a key focus of our Business Action for Women efforts.

Fig 1: Average temperatures in Bangladesh show an increasing trend.

Over the past two years, through different collaborations, BSR’s HERhealth program has collected daily data on more than 15,000 garment workers from factories’ human resources and production teams in Dhaka. To explore how climate-related weather events are affecting garment workers and the industry as a whole, we examined factory-level data to answer two questions:

1. Do high rainfall precipitations cause increases in health-related absenteeism in the industry?  
2. Do extreme temperatures affect workers’ stamina and focus, therefore reducing their productivity?

Link Between Rainfall and High Temperatures, and Absenteeism and Lower Productivity

By mapping data on workers’ sick leave and productivity rates against data on extreme weather conditions (measured by excessive precipitation and above-average temperature), we discovered a significant relationship between climate-related weather events and workers’ performance. The abundant rainfall in July—the peak of the monsoon season—correlated with an increase of monthly sick leave rate (calculated as number of workers absent due to health reasons of the total number of workers absent). An increase in 100 millimeters of average monthly rainfall precipitation—expected between the start of the monsoon season and its peak—is associated with an increase in sick leave rate by 10 percentage points per month.

Fig 2: Average monthly values of sick leave rate across factories indicate that an increase in precipitation corresponds to an increase in sick leave.

In addition, months with a 30°C average temperature correlated with a drop in productivity of more than two percentage points, compared to the winter months. While these are preliminary insights rather than conclusive evidence, these data present a worrying relationship between extreme climate events, worker well-being, and industry performance.

Fig 3: Average monthly standard minute values (an indicator of efficiency/productivity) across factories indicate a decrease as average temperature rises.

How Climate-Induced Health Hazards Affect the Garment Industry

It’s not clear what about extreme weather events might be affecting workers the most, but public health experts found that, in Bangladesh, abundant rainfall combined with poor water- and sewage-management systems leads to the diffusion of waterborne diseases, especially those transmitted by mosquitoes and parasites. Recent experiments in the garment sector in Bangalore, India, demonstrated how heat can reduce worker productivity by a magnitude that is similar to what we found in our data.

If these links are confirmed, the projections of increasing extreme weather events due to climate change pose a significant future risk for the garment industry. The risks will be particularly acute for women, as the industry is the largest employer of female workers in the country. By holding back the industry, climate change could undermine the progressive women’s social and economic achievements that Bangladesh has experienced over the last 30 years.

The Role of Business: Data, Research, and Pilot Programs

To create effective strategies that build business and workers’ resilience to extreme weather events, we need a better understanding of the magnitude of the problem and the drivers behind it.

First, we need more data to confirm the impact of climate on workers’ productivity and health at the industry level. Companies can invest in more research to design and test strategies that build the resilience of workers and businesses to extreme weather events and climate change.

Please contact us if you’re interested in learning more about how we connect you and your suppliers with research experts and NGOs to investigate questions like these and translate the findings into sustainable, practical solutions.

Blog | Friday March 9, 2018

How Do You Empower 100,000 Women?

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In 2014, ANN made its 100,000 Women Commitment: a commitment to empower 100,000 women working in its global supply chain. Through a strategic partnership with BSR’s HERproject, ANN achieved this milestone in 2018.

Christine Svarer, Director of HERproject, sat down with Jeanette Ferran Astorga, Vice President, Corporate Responsibility at ascena retail group, parent company of brands Ann Taylor, LOFT, and Lou & Grey, to discuss the rationale behind the commitment, its impact, and next steps.

Christine Svarer: Can you tell us a bit about how your 100,000 Women Commitment came about?

Jeanette Ferran Astorga: Absolutely. Our commitment, and our partnership with HERproject, was driven by our core values as an organization. From our corporate leadership on down, we believe every woman deserves a chance to be her best self every day, and we’ve been clear about how important it is to us to help women have the confidence to shape their lives in the way they want.

We aim to give women confidence through fashion and inspiration, but that must be matched by standing with and supporting the women in our supply chain. When we discussed how to do this, we realized that empowering women with knowledge of and access to services around health was a critical step, so we decided to commit to HERproject, BSR’s flagship women’s empowerment initiative. We were drawn to the peer-to-peer training model that enables women employees to acquire and share knowledge and skills. We also liked that HERproject brings together companies, their suppliers, and local partners to deliver workplace-based trainings focused on increasing women’s knowledge and self-esteem, while also strengthening management systems to create inclusive workplaces.  

Svarer: Shared values, like a shared goal, are so critical for a strong partnership—at least in our experience. And it was clear from the start that our values aligned. We know that when women working in supply chains have the confidence and ability to shape their lives through choices they value, they can be a huge positive force for change.

Ferran Astorga: Exactly. And it’s important to flag that none of this would have been possible without a similar shared belief in empowering women. Before we started, we consulted our strategic suppliers and confirmed that we would have their support to make this happen, as they needed to make the commitment to allow time for training and to support staff toward becoming peer educators, who would then bring the curriculum to their colleagues. Overwhelmingly, we found that our suppliers wanted to be part of HERproject.

As this commitment to supporting women in our supply chain has developed, it’s been amazing for us to see how our suppliers have found their own ways to spark employee engagement. HERproject gives suppliers the framework and the guidance for the trainings, but the suppliers have really stepped up in terms of customizing the programs to meet their employees’ needs, whether through health fairs, or having local doctors come in and run health clinics, or nutritional sessions for men and women. That’s a mark of success for us—that the suppliers have made it their own.

Svarer: I really like the connection from the corporate level to vendors, suppliers, and on to women workers. That really aligns with our belief at HERproject that for women’s empowerment to take hold—but also to create resilience in global supply chains—everyone must pull in the same direction.

Ferran Astorga: I agree. Another way we try to ensure that alignment is through embedding performance in this program into our vendor scorecards. Our vendors are assessed on how they are driving the initiative and how they are supporting the peer educators; we measure it as part of their commitment to management systems and improved workplace practices. That’s part of our effort to go beyond compliance and develop leading practices.  

Svarer: Absolutely—and we’re seeing other companies tying their commitment to women into how they work with their suppliers. What has been central to our work with you is that you have made women’s empowerment part and parcel of good business.

Ferran Astorga: That’s certainly our vision—and it means looking at our policies, as well as our programs. Earlier this week, we published a revised Code of Conduct for merchandise suppliers for the ascena retail group, which includes ANN’s brands. On two occasions in the last few years, we worked with BSR to revise this code through a gender lens, ensuring that specific challenges and obstacles that women face are incorporated into our expectations of suppliers. We have just launched the latest version of the code this week in line with International Women’s Day with a pronounced reference to supporting women in the workplace, especially informed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals and a commitment to SDG 5.

Svarer: I think that revising your Code of Conduct twice over the course of this partnership highlights not just your commitment but also how ANN continues to improve its ability to empower women within its supply chain. ANN has continued to learn and improve throughout this partnership—as have we at BSR and at HERproject.

The longer-term nature of ANN’s commitment is critical in this respect. Empowerment is not achieved overnight, so it’s been such a privilege for us to work with a partner like ANN that is in it for the long haul.

Ferran Astorga: I agree. And our work is not done. We’re continuing to work with HERproject to explore new ways to reach and empower the inspiring women who work in our supply chain, and we will be sharing more later this year. Stay tuned!

Case Studies | Friday March 9, 2018

Empowering 100,000 Women in ANN’s Global Supply Chain

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Through its work with BSR and participation in BSR’s HERproject, ANN, parent company of Ann Taylor, LOFT, and Lou & Grey, was able to set—and achieve—its commitment to empower 100,000 women in its global supply chain community between 2012 and 2018.

The Challenge

ANN is a purpose-driven company that aims to help women “put their best selves forward every day.” Women comprise more than 70 percent of ANN’s supply chain labor force, and company leaders recognized this opportunity to help improve the lives of those women who are manufacturing their products.

ANN therefore set out to deepen its investments in women’s empowerment in supply chains. ANN started its partnership with BSR’s HERproject in 2012. Following discussions between BSR and company leaders, in 2014, ANN made its pioneering 100,000 Women Commitment, through which the company committed to empowering 100,000 women working in its global supply chain community.    

Our Strategy

BSR worked with ANN’s Corporate Responsibility team to design and implement a strategy to realize its bold commitment.

The first pillar of this strategy was a deepened investment in HERproject—BSR’s flagship women’s empowerment initiative, which uses peer-to-peer training to enable women workers to acquire and share knowledge and skills on health and financial literacy. HERproject brings together international companies, their suppliers, and local partners to deliver workplace-based trainings that increase women’s knowledge and self-esteem, while also strengthening management systems to create inclusive workplaces. ANN expanded its work with HERproject to include 58 factories in China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.

In addition, through this partnership, ANN was instrumental in designing and implementing a new iteration of the HERproject platform, the “HERnetwork” methodology, implemented by “HERtoolkit.” HERnetwork and HERtoolkit were created to train local NGOs on the HERproject, allowing them to implement HERproject programs independently. Through the HERtoolkit, we were able to increase the reach of the trainings to women that would not have otherwise had access to these programs, and work toward sustaining the program as another resource for factories to use to reach the women.

Importantly, ANN became the first U.S. women’s specialty retailer to commit to the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs)—seven principles that provide a holistic framework to empower women in the workplace, marketplace, and community. ANN committed to integrating these principles into its responsible sourcing practices to ensure its supply chain supports women. In 2018 ANN, under the umbrella of the ascena retail group, launched a revised Code of Conduct for suppliers that incorporates a gender lens, which ensures that specific obstacles that women workers face are incorporated into the company’s expectations of suppliers.

Our Outcomes and Impact

In March 2018, ANN announced that it had achieved and surpassed its 100,000 Women Commitment earlier than expected.

Through the widescale implementation of HERproject across six countries, more than 2,800 peer educators were trained, which led to a sharing of knowledge and skills with more than 104,000 women.

These outcomes led to impressive results for workers in ANN’s supply chain. Specifically, ANN and HERproject have measured the following:

• A 38 percentage point increase among women that have performed a self-examination to recognize symptoms of breast cancer
• A 26 percentage point increase among women in the use of sanitary napkins rather than scraps of cloth from the factory
• A 25 percentage point increase among women in awareness that HIV can be prevented
• A 50 percentage point increase among individuals in the feeling that they will be able to meet their families’ future expenses in the next two years

In addition, the 100,000 Women Commitment has helped suppliers of ANN improve their performance. ANN and HERproject have measured a 4.5 percentage point decrease in turnover and a 22 percentage point decrease in products requiring rework, signaling stronger efficiency and accuracy in products made by these women across 37 factories in six countries.

ANN also engaged its customers in this effort by communicating in stores, multimedia, and through a microsite about the ongoing success of the project.

Lessons Learned

The 100,000 Women Commitment demonstrated the motivating power of a bold commitment. Such a commitment enabled ANN to mobilize its key stakeholders and ensure continued investment in its supply chain women’s empowerment programs.

The implementation of the commitment also reinforced the power of the peer-to-peer methodology for reaching large numbers of women workers in global supply chains.

Finally, the project highlighted how investing in women generates positive returns—for women, their families, and their communities. The positive impacts on women’s health and financial behavior were also mirrored by positive business impacts for suppliers. HERproject gives suppliers the framework and the guidance to share knowledge on healthcare and financial literacy with their workers. The suppliers have taken ownership of the program by customizing it to meet their workers’ needs, whether through health fairs or having local doctors come in and run health clinics or nutritional sessions for men and women. As a result, ANN has strengthened its relationships with its suppliers and developed a model for generating systemic improvements for workers in global supply chains.   

Blog | Thursday March 8, 2018

On International Women’s Day, Let’s Press for Progress in Global Supply Chains

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Over the past several months, we have seen unmistakable evidence that women around the world continue to face mistreatment. On this International Women’s Day, let us commit to use these stories to strengthen our resolve to ensure that women—and men—everywhere are empowered to create workplaces, communities, and societies in which women can thrive and be treated with respect.

Last week in Bangladesh, we visited sites of HERproject, a BSR collaborative initiative to empower low-income women working in global supply chains. In meeting with partners and speaking with women working in the country’s apparel sector, we saw firsthand the promise of business action to promote women’s health, financial literacy, and autonomy.

HERproject was launched just over 10 years ago, in recognition of the fact that there was a massive opportunity to not only make sure that the vast numbers of women working in global supply chains have basic legal protections, but also that they can become agents of change for themselves and their peers. We are proud that in the past decade, HERproject, working in collaboration with dozens of local partners inside the supply chains of more than 60 global apparel and agricultural companies in more than 700 workplaces, has empowered more than 800,000 women.

Our travels through the endless sprawl of Dhaka allowed us to spend time with the women who are making HERproject a success. In one apparel factory we visited, we saw the training of 40 peer educators in a factory that employs 5,000—training that will enable them to help their colleagues access health care. Tapoty Roy, a line supervisor and peer educator who has worked in the garment sector for the last 15 years, proudly told us how she has become a valued resource for the 60 women she oversees. "They come to me and ask for support with work or their home life, and they know I will help.” The information transmitted through the program enables women to reduce absences, keep newborns healthy, and build confidence and pride that strengthens both their personal and professional lives.

And the program’s benefits are not just for women. Sweet Begum, another factory worker who invited us to her house, introduced us to her son-in-law, who explained that he is using what he learned from Sweet Begum to train the men in the factory where he works.

These stories and many others demonstrate HERproject’s premise: Women in global supply chains represent a powerful force for change that can help ensure that global trade delivers human progress. Through coordinated action in global supply chains, we can stand with these women as they improve their lives and the lives of those around them.

In a sector that employs millions of women, often in difficult working conditions and societies that struggle to ensure public health, there is much left to do. Systemic barriers to women’s financial autonomy, access to health care, and gender-based violence are all too often a reality. Moreover, women working in global supply chains are subject to additional challenges, as exemplified by the statistics that indicate that Bangladeshi garment workers face far higher levels of sexual harassment and violence than the reported national average in Bangladesh.

The example of the women we met in Bangladesh the past few days is inspiring. One peer educator in Gazipur explained matter-of-factly that she makes sure that all 60 of the women in her line in the knitwear factory implement everything she’s learned from the HERhealth training. Thanks to her and the thousands of other peer educators HERproject has worked with, hundreds of thousands of women have seen the possibility that better information, opportunities, rights, and conditions can bring to their lives.

But they will only fully succeed once their leadership is supported by their colleagues, family, and supervisors—as well as the companies for which they produce.

We firmly believe that if all players across global value chains—buyers, suppliers, customers, women, and men—#PressForProgress, we can achieve a future where employment and empowerment go hand-in-hand for women workers, and where an empowered female workforce is widely recognized as a driver for business success.

On this particular International Women’s Day 2018, the need for action has never been clearer. As we have seen in stark terms through the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, there is a need to do far more to ensure that women are treated with respect and fairness, both within and outside the workplace.

This means more companies need to stand up and say, “We too will champion the rights, needs, and equal opportunities of women—not only in our headquarters, but across our supply chains.” In this context, we look forward to collaborating with you this year to empower even more women around the globe.

Blog | Monday March 5, 2018

Managing Supply Chain Water Risk: New Capacities for New Challenges

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In 2016, the ICT industry came under focus when environmental inspections found that 18 centralized water treatment plants in Shanghai had issues with heavy metals exceeding legal limits. As a result, the two large-scale electronics plants responsible for releasing these pollutants are in the process of being forced to stop operations. More recently, the Chinese government shut down an estimated tens of thousands of factories in 2017 as part of its broad efforts to more strictly enforce environmental regulations.

Incidents like this have put the spotlight on supply chain operational risks, prompting brands to pay more attention to the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) Corporate Information Transparency Index (CITI)—in particular IPE’s CITI Index Indicator 2.3, which focuses on issues around centralized wastewater treatment. Brands like Apple, Dell, Ericsson, and Foxconn have mapped their suppliers’ paths of wastewater discharge, incorporating suppliers’ centralized wastewater treatment facilities into the scope of their environmental compliance screening.

Last November, Dell and BSR invited a range of stakeholders to a roundtable in Suzhou, China, to explore how to address shared water issues in the Tai-hu Lake catchment area. Two important principles provided the foundation of this meeting: first, that water scarcity is a risk that needs to be managed to ensure supply chain sustainability. And second, that water is a common good with multiple competing interests. A growing movement of companies and international initiatives are specifically targeting water resource management as a key component of supply chain sustainability. 

It has long been recognized that water scarcity will be a defining issue of the 21st century. Climate change, population growth, and competing demands on limited water supplies have all contributed to water increasingly becoming a focus for supply chain sustainability. A study conducted by McKinsey found that 90 percent of air, soil, and land impacts associated with consumer goods are associated with supply chains.

Traditional approaches to managing the environmental risks of supply chains have taken one of two forms:

• Product stewardship focuses on reducing environmental impacts associated with product design, packaging, and material use.
• Process stewardship takes a life cycle approach to managing impacts associated with the production, distribution, and end-of-life product management.

Both approaches help companies identify how to manage risks, reduce impacts, and identify important cost savings. Today, increased transparency and disclosure requirements in places like China are underscoring the need for companies to better manage their water resources.

This has been highlighted by the UN Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate, which recognizes the need for companies to engage on water issues through their direct operations, supply chains and watershed management, public policy advocacy, community engagement, and transparency.

By initiating discussions in the Tai-hu Lake catchment area, Dell has taken the next step in managing these risks more holistically. Going beyond product and process stewardship, the company is now dealing with the broader risks to its supply chain associated with watershed management. This type of environmental stewardship has been traditionally led by governments and requires more skills, tools, and resources than companies have traditionally used in product and process stewardship.  

Ultimately, managing water scarcity will require businesses and their suppliers to:

• Broaden the scope of risks in their supply chains to include water scarcity, floods, and related issues.
• Move from short-term thinking to managing risks over longer time horizons.
• Develop capacities in watershed management, stakeholder outreach, and public policy advocacy.
• Develop risk monitoring systems and capacities within their supply chains.
• Share risk information with other stakeholders in a watershed, including potential competitors.

Responding to this challenge not only addresses the broader concern of water scarcity, it is also addresses the fundamental ability for a company like Dell to continue to operate. This extends to the needs of suppliers’ employees and their families living in affected watersheds.

The challenges of water scarcity will require businesses to expand their supply chain sustainability efforts to include the notion of shared risk over longer periods of time. Dell has started the process of managing this shared risk through its stakeholder consultations with other water users in the Tai-hu Lake catchment area in China.

At BSR, we will continue to work with our members to identify the strategies required to respond to the ever-increasing set of global challenges that demand collaboration and innovation. Contact us if you’d like to learn more about how we can work with you on water and supply chain sustainability management.

Blog | Wednesday February 28, 2018

Collaboration: How Business Must Lead to Achieve Sustainable Development

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How does business lead?

When we think of leadership, we often think of a single, iconic leader. We celebrate leading companies for their bold actions on sustainability risks and opportunities; yet one of the most important ways business leads is through collaboration.

In the past year, it has become increasingly clear that the world is changing fast—and profoundly. We are faced with challenges like catastrophic climate change, increasing inequality, and the rapid emergence of new technologies that are disrupting societies and raising new, fundamental ethical questions. These are not new phenomena, but the pace and scope of change is picking up. These challenges also come at a time when established governance models are being questioned—or outright failing—which makes new leadership constellations all the more necessary.

In partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation, today BSR is launching a new report, Private-Sector Collaboration for Sustainable Development. This report is based on the premise that business must take a leadership role through collaboration, both to ensure the future of sustainable business and for the benefit of society as a whole. As we look to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and implement the Paris Agreement on climate change, it is clear that we must transcend the status quo of individual action to foster collaboration for impact at scale. We must mobilize, leverage, and direct the transformative power of business’s collective resources and capabilities toward these ends.

We need more business collaboration, but what we need most are well-designed, well-governed, accountable, and impactful collaborations. This report is a contribution in that direction. It sets out to identify the key success factors for collaboration and provide concrete guidance to business leaders on impactful collaborations. It has been informed by the rich experiences and thoughtful perspectives of practitioners from many parts of the private sector as well as insights from civil society organizations that have worked closely in partnership with companies.

Collaborative leadership has been a fundamental tenet of BSR’s 25 years of work to create a just and sustainable world. Our strategy emphasizes the need to ideate, design, and explore—and subsequently accelerate and scale—powerful collaborations that yield transformational change. We believe that the time is right to pursue such opportunities vigorously, aggressively, and with focus. We have written this report to provide guidance that we hope will encourage more businesses to engage in collaborations—and help them do so more successfully.

For The Rockefeller Foundation, building strategic partnerships is a core component of our strategic approach. We believe that creating coalitions that engage the full range of actors across a given system—from the private sector to government to civil society—can accelerate breakthroughs that deliver impact at scale. We hope that this guide to engaging the private sector in designing and implementing high-impact collaborations for sustainable development will serve as a catalyst for the next generation of transformative results.

We will only succeed in achieving the SDGs if we truly work together, combining our capabilities, resources, and assets. We invite you to join us to create shared solutions to global challenges—to lead through collaboration.

Reports | Wednesday February 28, 2018

Private-Sector Collaboration for Sustainable Development

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Why Read This?

In the past year, it has become increasingly clear that the world is changing fast—and profoundly. We are faced with challenges such as catastrophic climate change, increasing inequalities, and the rapid emergence of new technologies that disrupt societies and raise new, fundamental ethical questions.

To tackle these challenges, we must transcend the status quo of individual actions to foster collaboration for impact at scale. We need well-designed, well-governed, accountable, and impactful collaborations.

Drawing on BSR's 25 years of experience in designing, implementing, and scaling collaborative initiatives, this report identifies the characteristics of successful collaborations and helps companies better understand how to prepare for and contribute to their success.