Responsibility
Our Social Responsibility
At SOREL we value ethical, sustainable manufacturing practices and are committed to assuring that the partners with whom we do business share these values. Our Social Responsibility program consists of three main elements 1) Monitoring and Remediation, 2) Training and Capacity Building and 3) Multi-Stakeholder Engagement.
Code of Conduct
It is important to us that people making our product work in an ethical, fair and respectful environment. Our code of conduct called Standards of Manufacturing Practices (SMP) outlines standards supporting our values in the contract factories making our product and consists of standards in the following areas:
- Child Labor
- Harassment or Abuse
- Nondiscrimination
- Freedom of Association
- Wages and Benefits
- Hours of Work
- Health and Safety
- Environment
- Ethical Conduct
Monitoring and Remediation
Contract factories producing SOREL products are monitored regularly with respect to our SMP standards in addition to local labor laws and International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions. Our Corporate Responsibility Specialists conduct regular, unannounced audits of our suppliers to ensure compliance with our SMP. Conducting unannounced audits allows our staff to see factory conditions as they are on a typical day.
In addition to training our Corporate Responsibility Specialists, our internal supply chain management staff also receives training on our SMP, including how to identify and respond to supply chain risk issues. With all supply chain employees working together, we can have greater influence at our contract facilities to alleviate risks and affect change.
Training and Capacity Building
Monitoring alone is not enough. We also support supplier efforts to promote sustainable solutions. Our training and capacity building program encourages suppliers to further develop skills to effectively remediate and enhance overall performance. Our program does this by partnering with training providers to offer consulting and workshops that provide suppliers with tools and techniques to enhance management systems in the areas of:
- Human Resources Management
- Communications
- Production Efficiency
Multi-stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration
Social responsibility is not a statement, it’s a conversation. It’s about engaging others in the industry for continuous improvement.
We collaborate with other apparel and footwear brands who share our Corporate Responsibility approach and whose products are produced in the same contract factories as ours. At any given time, a factory could be making shirts for ten different companies in the US and Europe. By sharing audit findings with other brands, we can reduce redundant auditing and focus on finding solutions.
We also engage the communities in which our manufacturing partners operate. HERproject, a project we have been involved with since 2009, is an example of one of our long-term projects that focuses on worker wellbeing. HERproject works to change women’s lives through workplace programs that provide access to women’s health education.
