Why You Need to be Talking to Staff About Slavery
By 30 Jan 2020
Expectations on organisations to exercise social responsibility have grown dramatically over the past decade, with consumers placing ever greater pressure on businesses to put their social impact ahead of profits to ensure an overall benefit to society.
Modern Slavery refers to slavery which we continue to see present in our world today. Alarmingly over 40 million people worldwide are still said to be living in slavery, a number which has people and governments alike putting pressure on organisations to ensure they are not contributing to this statistic.
In 2018 we saw the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) passed by the Australia federal government, outlining requirements for Australian business to provide annual modern slavery statements and transparency in their supply chains; a major step in the acknowledgment of the issue both in Australia and around the world. The first step to achieving a solution is understanding there is a problem and as organisations step up to meet their social responsibilities, we have seen a sharp increase in requests from around the world for the development of courseware relating to modern slavery.
An organisation educating staff and drawing awareness to the issue of modern slavery as well as committing to providing transparency in their supply chains stands to gain much more than just knowing they are doing the right thing ethically. These organisations stand to receive a range of additional benefits including;
– The nurturing of a positive culture within the organisation
– Increase in consumer trust in the brand
– The development of reliable supply chains
– Confidence in high quality of goods working with reputable suppliers.
Given these benefits, eLearning professionals are strongly recommending organisations work to have modern slavery modules and policies in place to educate staff and outline their expectations as soon as possible.