We conduct regular reviews on the effectiveness of our programme and report externally on our performance through various channels including our annual Modern Slavery Act Statement and Corporate Responsibility report. The latest versions of these reports can be found on our website, and our MS Statement can also be accessed via the UK Government’s Registry of Modern Slavery Statements.
We value feedback and insight from external stakeholders regarding the effectiveness of our strategy to address human rights risk in our supply chains. Our modern slavery statement in particular is subject to a high level of external scrutiny, and numerous organisations undertake formal reviews and publish league tables to assess corporate performance. In the past our statements have been ranked joint 2nd of all FTSE 100 companies by the Business and Human Rights Research Centre (BHRRC) and joint 3rd in the Global Governance FTSE 100 Index.
We seek to engage trade unions, civil society organisations and NGOs wherever possible to support the review process. In addition to our mandatory modern slavery reporting we also attend regular review meetings with the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) to demonstrate our progress against their principles of implementation. Having confirmed time-bound objectives, each year we submit evidence of action to address these salient human rights risks in our global supply chains.
The various collaborative initiatives we actively support also provide a channel for obtaining feedback from external stakeholders, including our suppliers. For example, after FNET supplier members raised concerns about the workload impact of inconsistent ethical auditing requirements, Morrisons and 8 other UK retailers commissioned an independent review to identify opportunities for increased alignment.
This exercise captured feedback from over 200 food suppliers via an anonymous survey and we have incorporated the findings into our policy update. Similarly, these groups support us to monitor the scale of improvement in our global supply chains. For example, a recent Spain Ethical Trade Forums annual member survey confirmed that 89% of suppliers have implemented actions to improve working conditions within their business and highlighted an increase in workforce engagement levels over a 2 year period of active involvement in the forums.
We will continue to work with external stakeholders and initiatives to support measurement of our performance and publish regular updates of our progress on our corporate website.