ETI has decades of practical experience supporting companies to develop more responsible and effective purchasing practices to improve conditions for workers in supply chains and comply with legal requirements. We provide: 

• Tried and tested methodologies. 
• Established and credible frameworks, co-designed by ETI. 
• 25+ years' experience in supporting businesses to address human rights risks. 

Our experience has shown that companies are often unaware of how their purchasing and procurement practices can impact human rights in supply chains and how responsible sourcing policies are often not being implemented effectively across organisations.  

Upcoming human rights legislation explicitly acknowledges the importance of purchasing practices, requiring companies to review their own commercial operations and take action to prevent potential adverse impacts. 

ETI’s approach creates a safe space in which to gather insights from key functions and supply chain partners, identifying any potential gaps between policy and reality and highlighting where current practice may be exacerbating human rights risks within the supply chain. For leadership teams, these insights can be invaluable 

ETI can then support you to make proactive improvements and mitigate risk. 

ETI frameworks 

We use the Common Framework for Responsible Purchasing Practices to support and inform out approach. This was developed through broad collaboration with industry and expert stakeholders and is recognised as a robust and credible resource.  

The Framework comprises five key principles of responsible purchasing.  

Principle 1- Integration and reporting 

Principle 2- Equal partnership 

Principle 3- Collaborative planning 

Principle 4- Fair payment and contract terms 

Principle 5- Sustainable costing 

ETI support for companies is structured around sector-specific versions of the framework, enabling a consistent and comprehensive approach to identifying risk and implementing change. We work with you to ensure your strategic priorities are covered and focus action where it is most needed. 

Key steps to improving purchasing practices 

We use a tried and tested roadmap to address purchasing practices that can be applied across all sectors and industries. This approach is based on the 7 key steps below and aligns with recognised human rights due diligence (HRDD) principles, whilst remaining accessible and engaging for all teams. 

1. Building understanding: Preparing the way for more responsible practices, we support your teams to understand how their role relates to the company’s human rights objectives and the power they have to make a difference for workers in your supply chains. 
2. Hearing from your teams:  We provide your teams with a safe and judgement free space to share insights and highlight challenges. Whether done through cross-functional workshops or a simple survey to gauge awareness, this step typically produces valuable insights for leadership teams. 
3. Gaining insights from suppliers: We can engage with your suppliers through various methods to review their experience of the purchasing process, understand impacts and find viable solutions.  
4. Assessing risk: We can compare insights from internal teams, suppliers, known industry risks and other approaches to highlight how purchasing practices may be creating or exacerbating human rights risks. 
5. Exploring and prioritising ideas for action: Based on identified risks, we can engage with suppliers and internal teams to explore and inform ideas for action. These will be prioritised and captured in an action plan, with roles, responsibilities and timelines for next steps.  
6. Leadership oversight: The most successful stories of change include strong leadership presence throughout. We can support you to keep senior colleagues involved and updated throughout for key dialogue and sign-off. This is vital to creating an enabling environment and supporting practical change. 
7. Tracking progress and embedding changes for the long-term: We provide mechanisms to continually review progress against the action plan and ensure key risks are being addressed. Positive practices need to be supported by embedding responsibilities into roles, KPIs and wider governance mechanisms, ensuring long term sustainable improvement. 

ETI can support with any or all of these essential steps, which can be implemented in a variety of ways depending on type or size of business. 

Packages and pricing 

Our approach can be tailored to suit your company’s needs and resources, from one-off workshops to more in-depth programmes. Contact rpp-training@eti.org.uk in the first instance to discuss options and pricing.  

Typical packages include: 

• An introductory training workshop: Bringing together representatives from key functions such as buying, merchandising, technical and sustainability, ETI can provide an accessible introduction to the concept of human rights due diligence and the role of purchasing practices in enabling better working conditions. Using our frameworks and tools, we can explain the key principles of responsible purchasing and roadmaps to improvement. We can facilitate dialogue to explore strengths within your company and areas for improvement, leaving you primed and ready for the next steps. 
• A series of training workshops: To build a greater understanding of the key principles of responsible purchasing, ETI can deliver a series of workshops based on each of the five principles of the Common Framework. Workshops can explore the key themes within each principle, facilitating group activities to explore current strengths and challenges and capture ideas for improvement. We can provide you with follow-up activities to support progress in between sessions. 
• Identifying key risks: Through a mixture of interviews and/or surveys with internal functions (particularly buying, merchandising, and sustainability) and suppliers, ETI can support an initial risk assessment. This will be based on the key principles of the Common Framework, comparing collated insights and providing initial assumptions on areas of risk and links to human rights risks. The outputs can provide a valuable way to evidence potential concerns to leadership teams and gain support for further action. 
• Leadership engagement: Based on insights gathered from your internal teams and suppliers, ETI can present findings to senior executives. Supported by ETI’s Executive Director where appropriate, we can support integrating action toward responsible purchasing practices by presenting identified risks, explaining links to supply chain risks and forthcoming legislation, and making key recommendations for action. 
• Action planning: ETI can support you to develop an effective long-term action plan to address key risks related to purchasing practices. 

Contact rpp-training@eti.org.uk to build the right package for you.