Our Head of HR and Ethical, Marie Scurfield, recently attended Strong Together’s 10-year Conference by being a part of a panel to discuss our ongoing commitment to tackling labour exploitation throughout our supply chain.
It was a privilege to be approached by Bethan Hunt, UK Programmes Manager of Stronger Together, to join a panel of incredible industry leaders to speak at the ‘Eyes, ears, hearts and minds – Championing the best practice in responding to modern slavery cases’ breakout session. Bethan asked me to reflect on the work that Angus Soft Fruits has done to demonstrate and further progress our commitment to proactively tackling labour exploitation within our supply chain.
I was delighted to discuss our approach – treating people as people by embedding an employer-of-choice ethos in our operations to make the employment experience the best it can be. And our many other commitments, such as;
- By exceeding compliance, it is easier to mitigate modern salary risks while improving the ability to recruit and retain our employees.
- We have introduced modern slavery champions who support employee well-being in the workplace.
- We are incorporating robust risk assessments to identify where the risks are.
- We are raising awareness of modern slavery for all our team to enable the identification of any tell-tale signs and the confidence to raise concerns with suppliers.
- We have focused on “worker’s voice” to empower people in our supply chain to speak about their experiences and raise issues appropriately through grievance mechanisms.
- We have bespoke resources for our suppliers to build their resilience and capacity.
The discussion was very interesting and interactive overall, and it was great to discuss the incredible work we are doing here at Angus Soft Fruits.
Marie Scurfield, Head of HR & Ethical.
You can read more about the programme by visiting our Ethical & Human Rights page.
