Translations

ORANGE initiates international cooperation to promote responsible procurement

5. Fair Operating Practices

Responsible purchasing

Sector Telecommunication, Medias, ITC

Year 2016

Country France

Transmitter

Context

Orange is one of the main telecommunications operators as it serves 250 million customers around the world. The CSR is deeply embedded in the culture and the history of the company. Orange has been built on founding values guiding their principles of action regarding all its stakeholders. In its policy of control of the environmental and societal risks, Orange deemed essential the preventive control of supplied products and working conditions on manufacturing premises.

Objectives

To enhance the inclusion of the CSR challenges by the suppliers, through mobilizing the purchasers of the sector
To cooperate with its competitors in order to control and influence their common suppliers more efficiently
To pool the CSR audits of suppliers according to a shared method to allocate costs and share the results

APPROACH

Since 2007, Orange has audited and controlled its Asian suppliers, particularly in China. Since 2009, these audits have been conducted by a specialized external company and have comprised a social part based on the international norm.In 2010, Télécom Orange, Telecom Italia and Deutsche Telecom launched the Joint Audit Cooperation (JAC) initiative to ensure the compliance with contractual requirements, and a better incorporation of the human rights protection among suppliers and subcontractors, which allows for the CSR audits of suppliers to be pooled according to a shared method. In 2013, the JAC decreed guiding principles to facilitate the sharing of its members’ CSR expectations with the common suppliers.In close cooperation, the operators determine the common suppliers and the subcontractors to be audited, by designating to them a referent Operator who will be responsible for conducting the audit and cover the costs.Then the operating method is set:

Audits by international organizations selected on requests for quotation, specialized in CSR. The auditor must speak the language of the audited supplier
Confidentiality agreement executed with the supplier to restrict the circulation of the audit results to the JAC’s own members
Planned corrective actions, in agreement with suppliers, and controlled by the JAC’s members

Best Practice spotted by World Forum for a Responsible Economy in 2012 and updated in 2016.

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

Since 2010, 7 other operators have joined the JAC and 112 audits have been conducted in 15 countries around the world, that is to say 83 plants and more than 400,000 workers
Intensified cooperation between Orange and its suppliers
100% of suppliers audited for compliance audits in 2015

Benefits

Involved suppliers available for the audit
Better working conditions closer to the standards or better control practices applied in Europe, particularly in the Health Safety field, expansion to other operators and suppliers