Lidl UK uses Sedex to implement and embed human rights within their business practices
The Sedex Ethical Trade Manager has played a vital role in establishing our business human rights KPIs, working with our supply base to drive improvements and raising knowledge and understanding internally, to ensure human rights is embedded within our purchasing practices.
Lidl UK is a discount food supermarket with over 720 stores, 22,000 employees and 12 distribution centres in England, Scotland and Wales. Committed to ‘making good food accessible to everyone’, Lidl UK has been working hard to develop a technical management framework as part of its human rights due diligence approach.
Lidl UK’s objective
Lidl UK wanted to develop their responsible sourcing programme, to support them to effectively embed human rights assessment into their buying processes, using the Sedex platform and wider project work. This would help them to understand the areas of risk that lie within their supply chain and manage global issues.
- Lidl became a Sedex member in 2016. In order to support the project objective, Lidl UK contracted a ‘Sedex Ethical Trade Manager’ to:
- Establish business KPIs for all Lidl tier one suppliers
- Ensure all UK suppliers were compliant with Lidl ethical trade policy
- Develop a KPI dashboard to ensure compliance could be monitored on an on-going basis and shared with the buying teams
- Develop guidance for suppliers and act as a point of contact on Sedex requirements
- Support with a range of human rights related projects, such as modern slavery training roll-out, the modern slavery statement development, internal awareness raising and wider policy development.
The Sedex Ethical Trade Manager has played a vital role in establishing our business human rights KPIs, working with our supply base to drive improvements and raising knowledge and understanding internally, to ensure human rights is embedded within our purchasing practices.
Achievements and outcomes
Through the support of the Sedex Ethical Trade Manager, Lidl UK has developed a robust monitoring programme for Sedex compliance that has been well received by the buying teams, raised awareness and engagement within the supply base on this important topic and built transparency of human rights risks across both the business’s own operations and it’s supply chain.
