Integrity

Integrity is at the heart of the Ethical Supply Chain Program. Our entire team is dedicated to protecting the integrity of our program and improving confidence in social audits.

Our focus is providing factories, auditors, and other stakeholders with a secure and trusted audit process free of concerns of unethical influence, addressing behaviours that harm and hinder the objective of enhancing ethical standards at factories.

We expect all our accredited third-party audit partners to adhere to the highest standards of professional ethics, with Key Performance Indicators to measure this.  

We encourage factories to take an active role in assessing auditor performance and integrity, and have introduced new confidential reporting channels, along with strategies on inspection and risk control.

Independent integrity function

Reporting directly to the CEO, our dedicated Integrity Team leads on protecting and strengthening the integrity of the Ethical Supply Chain Program and providing a trustworthy and confidential mechanism to report and investigate ethics concerns. The team provides guidance to factories on building a robust integrity system, and leadership in delivering our shared mission to enhance the reputation and confidence all stakeholders should have in social audits.

The integrity team has established new reporting channels – including the Ethical Supply Chain Program online auditor assessment tool – which enables factories or auditors to raise any integrity concerns confidentially, and has introduced strengthened strategies on inspection and risk control.

The Integrity team conducts thorough investigations into any allegation raised and undertakes proactive steps to assure audit quality. These include regular, unannounced inspections and undercover shadow audits at high-risk locations, entities, and auditors.

Reporting integrity concerns

Anyone can report an ethical concern by filling in the Integrity Reporting Form below and emailing it to integrity@ethicalsupplychain.org.

Cases reported to the Integrity Team by factories are dealt with separately to Ethical Supply Chain Program auditing review and certification process. Therefore, factories will not jeopardize or delay their Certification by reporting integrity concerns to the Ethical Toy Program team.

Association of Professional Social Compliance Auditors

The Ethical Supply Chain Program is pleased to be supporting the work of APSCA, the newly created Association of Professional Social Compliance Auditors (www.theapsca.org) whose mission is to enhance the professionalism, consistency, and credibility of individual auditors and organizations performing independent social compliance audits.