Human Rights
Find out more about our approach to respecting human rights
Understanding the potential human rights impacts of our activities and business relationships
- Discrimination
- Forced Labour
- Freedom of Association
- Health and Safety
- Living Wages
- Water and Sanitation
- Working Hours
Globally 1.1 billion people have insecure title to the land that they live on and farm. Land disputes have become one of the leading causes of local conflict around the world when people find out that their land has been allocated or sold without their consent. We see land rights as a growing salient issue. Whilst we have no evidence it is occurring in our extended supply chain we know it is an issue for certain commodity crops.
Water scarcity and sustainable water resource management are quickly rising to the top of the agenda for many businesses.
We respect the right to safe, clean water and sanitation, we strive to use water efficiently and to encourage responsible water stewardship in catchments where we and our extended supply chain operate.
Alongside the work we are doing within our supply chain, we are committed to ensuring that the principles of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation is integrated into our own business operations. We are clear that we will not take any action or perform any operations that undermine governmental obligations to its citizens through the Human Right to Water and where a country has not committed to the policy, we will act within the principle, as defined by the UN.
Our Global Sourcing Principles make it clear that within a work setting all businesses must ensure workers are provided with access to suitable water, hygiene and sanitation facilities. They must also ensure that their operations do not negatively affect access to safe water for the community.
Find out more about our approach to protecting natural resources.
Embedding human rights in our business practices
We have established a Human Rights Stakeholder Advisory Group comprising leading subject matter experts from the Institute for Business and Human Rights, Shift, BSR, Impactt and Oxfam. It includes representation from our Sustainable Retail Advisory Board organisations to ensure there are clear linkages between these two groups.
The Group is tasked with advising us on our human rights approach, considering the perspectives of interested stakeholders and views of potentially affected rights holders. They also reflect critically on the implementation of our human rights strategy and its effectiveness and impact.
The Group also provides advice on addressing human rights risks and supporting remedy, particularly in the design of grievance mechanisms and effective remediation. The Group plays no role in determining the handling or outcome of individual grievances unless they are asked to review a case if a party to a complaint is unhappy with the outcome.
Since its formation it has met four times to review our to human rights, customer privacy, inclusion, risk assessment and grievances. They have publicly commented on our performance as part of our reporting process. An overview of the group’s activities during 2016/17 is provided in our Human Rights Report 2017.
Find out more about our approaching to delivering Plan A.
Our Group Secretary is responsible for providing a central source of guidance and advice on policy, procedure and ethics with support from a small team of legal and corporate governance specialists.
- Updated on the controls in place to ensure an uncompromising approach to maintaining M&S's ethical standards in an increasingly competitive international sourcing environment.
- Discussed how risks are mitigated through supplier selection, appraisal criteria and regional improvement programmes supported by a strict Internal Audit and monitoring approach.
- Updated on the approach to supplier inspections and the different processes adopted in Food and Clothing & Home, noting the regular independent ethical audits on all factories used by M&S. This included a formal Internal Audit of our Food ethical sourcing process and controls to manage the risks around new and existing suppliers’ compliance with ethical trading legal requirements and achieving M&S ethical trading standards.
- Updated on the ways in which the business proactively supports the human rights of colleagues across all business operations, including compliance with the Modern Slavery Act and the steps taken to prevent modern slavery throughout the business and its supply chain.
For M&S to be a successful and responsible business we depend on the support of stakeholders in the communities where we trade and where we and our supply chain operate. We are committed to engage with potentially and actually affected stakeholders on human rights, including in local communities where relevant. It’s hard for a company to know and show that it is respecting human rights if it is blind to how others perceive its actions and their effects.
It is critical that we identify and regularly interact with affected rights holders and expert stakeholders. These include our employees, customers, supply chain workers, contractors, artisanal and smallholder producers and local community and civil society groups. Affected individuals and groups may in turn be organised and represented by particular organisations or individuals (e.g. a community elder, trade union or local association) or have no formal structure. We employ a variety of techniques to identify these stakeholders which range from direct engagement and interaction, desktop research, third party assessments through to leveraging existing country knowledge and contacts. This includes identifying stakeholders based on their specific skills and expertise, such as civil society organisations, government agencies, and academic institutions. We interact with these stakeholders through ongoing dialogue on our identified salient human rights issues and consult with them in specific instances where possible human rights impacts have been highlighted through audit alerts, whistleblowing concerns or media publications.
We have a map of advocates for affected stakeholders we engage with by country and where we have run in depth programmes for local work/producer and community groups around factories and farms. We also map where our business and supply chain operations are likely to negatively impact on rights holders. For example, when building new stores we adopt the Considerate Constructors Scheme to ensure that we minimise any impacts (e.g. nuisance, health and safety, etc) of our work on others (e.g. Ecclesall Road in Sheffield where we achieved an industry leading score).
To be successful our approach to stakeholder identification and engagement needs to be a continual improvement process which fosters an open and candid discussion without fear of retribution. For instance, as our human rights programme evolves we plan to revisit how well our map of advocates represent our most vulnerable groups.
We group human rights stakeholders into three groups:
Directly affected stakeholders Includes employees, customers, supply chain workers and their representatives through trade unions and community leaders | We interact directly with our people in many ways, including via line managers, our Business Involvement Groups, our European Works Council, regular ‘Your Say’ staff surveys, and confidential hotline. We engage with customers via formal customer focus groups, customer services, our store staff and direct contact through our Chairman's Office. In our extended supply chain, all ethical assessments include direct workers interviews and we are expanding the use of mobile technology to survey workers directly. However, our experience is that the most meaningful understanding of salient issues comes from more in-depth interactions with affected rights holders. For example, in 2002 following a critical industry report we became aware of alleged abuses of female flower workers in Kenya. As part of an ETI delegation, we listened to the personal testimonies of 50 workers from flower farms supplying UK retail. This gave us important insights into the underlying issues of harassment and gender discrimination and the role of buyers in mitigating them. |
Advocates for affected stakeholders Representing informed proxies, such as NGOs and academics | We recognise that sometimes our ability to interact directly with stakeholders is limited, not least as rights holders may be wary of expressing their views directly with us. Intermediaries acting on the behalf of others is crucial to bridging this gap. For example, in 2012 as a result of NGO reports highlighting that ‘Sumangali’ (exploitation of young women in the mills and textile industry, a form of bonded labour) was still in practice we became a founding member of the ETI Tamil Nadu Multi-Stakeholder Working Group. This group aims to contribute to the elimination of exploitative practices in Southern India by promoting ethical recruitment of young women into the spinning sector, textile and garment industries. |
Human rights experts Comprising broad experts or experts on a particular salient issue | In any given year we meet with dozens of expert organisations including civil society, academia, and specialist consultants. Oxfam has been an indispensable stakeholder to M&S for a number of years. For example, in 2012, Oxfam shared with us the findings of their poverty footprint study in the horticultural sector in Kenya. This showed that despite a decade long focus on ethical trade, the communities where many workers lived were facing significant of challenges including sanitation, security and education. This ultimately led to us entering into a partnership with Emerging Leaders to implement their leadership training programme at scale within our supply base. |
Helping suppliers and partners improve their performance in respecting human rights
Supply chain training
We’re committed to working with our suppliers to help them develop the necessary skills and competencies to meet our requirements by offering a range of training and development opportunities.
Our training programmes cover a range of topics and are delivered through a variety of formats including e-learning, presentations, workshops, global supplier conferences, practical assessments, webinars or case studies.
We have designed training programmes to educate suppliers about local laws, their rights at work, and our Global Sourcing Principles.
For example, in 2012 we developed and implemented a Fire Safety programme in our factories in Bangladesh with Worldwide Responsible Accreditation Production (WRAP). The programme is unique to M&S due to its fire champion module which takes workers right through from how fires start, the context and risks within the workplace, to how to effectively evacuate the workplace, the importance of safe practices and how they play a part in reducing the risk of fire in the workplace and their homes. To date 130,000 workers have received training through the M&S Fire Safety training programme and by December 2015 all of our garment factories had a worker fire champion in place.
We established our Global Community Programme to benefit people in key regions of the world where we source our products, including the UK, Asia and Africa. The programme’s key aim is to develop resilience and efficiency by empowering people in our supply chain. For example, the Emerging Leaders programme has provided leadership skills training for more than 20,000 people in our supply chains in Kenya and South Africa since 2012. Find out more about our Global Communities Programme.
Supplier Conferences
First International Human Rights Conference, Delhi
At the end of January 2018, we held our first ever international human rights conference in Delhi, India with over 250 attendees from our retail partners, M&S international retail and sourcing offices as well as logistics, IT, facilities, Food and Clothing & Home suppliers. The conference was also attended by many of our collaborators too including Coca-Cola, BT, Ethical Trading Initiative, Freedom Fund, Ethical Tea Partnership, Traidcraft, Fairtrade, Unseen and representatives from Indian, UK and Australian Governments.
The conference aimed to provide information and practical tools for suppliers on addressing the complexities of human rights within business, as well as sharing experiences and insights from the wider business community. We also launched our M&S Forced Labour Toolkit for International Suppliers and Partners at the conference.
A highlights video of the conference can be viewed below:.
Human Rights and Modern Slavery Conference
In February 2017, we brought together 150 suppliers from our UK Property, Logistics, IT, Retail and Clothing and Home supply base for our flagship Modern Slavery and Human Rights Conference, held in London. This event set out to help improve our suppliers understanding and management of modern slavery risk in their operations and wider supply chain. External speakers included Unseen, Stronger Together, the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre.
- Understand and work to meet our Global Sourcing Principles
- Comply with the Modern Slavery Act Reporting requirements if they are in scope
- Continue to engage with M&S on human rights and modern slavery
We’re continually innovating and setting new standards for UK food retailing and all our suppliers must commit to continuous improvement. We also recognise the limitations of mainstream ethical audits to identify more hidden or subtle human rights issues such as forced labour.
First introduced in 2010, the Sustainability element of our Supplier Scorecard is a beyond audit tool designed to reflect where a supplier is on their journey towards sustainability. In 2017 we undertook an extensive review to update the programme and align with our 2025 Plan A commitments. The Sustainability Scorecard is underpinned by a self-assessment framework comprising four elements: Environmental, Ethical, Lean Manufacturing (or waste elimination) and Supply Chain which detail the building blocks to enable change in performance. Suppliers are scored from Provisional through to Bronze, Silver and Gold.
The Ethical measures have been specifically designed to help our suppliers progressively improve their performance in identifying and managing ethical trade issues and demonstrate that they have excellent management systems in place. The Ethical Framework consists of twelve sections including: Human Resource management systems, Responsible recruitment, Fair reward and Human Rights.
The new Supply Chain Framework sets out M&S standards for suppliers on managing their own suppliers and raw material sourcing operations. The Framework enables suppliers to measure how well suppliers manage raw material supply chains. The Supply Chain Framework consists of five sections including: Sustainable Sourcing and Human Rights.
We expect all sites used by our direct suppliers to be working towards Silver as a minimum. Silver sites will have a well-established staff survey with high response rates and positivity scores, have no critical issues or outstanding major issues as a result of ethical audits and an effective training matrix in place for all workers. Sustainability Supplier scorecard performance forms part of our ongoing business relationship with suppliers.
Sites achieving Silver or Gold status are validated by independent industry experts. Silver is not easily achieved and represents performance above the norm in the industry – which is why products produced at a Silver or Gold site also qualify for a Plan A product attribute. As part of our new Plan A 2025 commitments we have committed that 95% of our food will be from sites validated to silver by 2020 and 50% will be from Gold validated sites by 2025. Find out more about our approach to product sustainability.
As of April 2018, 63% of products by volume came from sites that had achieved at least Silver.
- Workers’ rights training
- Human resource (HR) systems and industrial relations management training for middle management and HR personnel
- Productivity training for industrial engineers and production line management
Investigating and remedying breaches of our standards
Workers or their representatives are best placed to raise issues locally and potentially solve a dispute as it is occurring. Localised solutions tend to be most attuned to local culture, the concerns of those whose rights are impacted, and opportunities for sustainable solutions. External investigations of complaints by brand companies or multi-stakeholder initiatives are an important and necessary back-stop to these processes and should ideally be used after all local mechanisms have been tried first.
Often the issues that are raised are complex. This means it takes time to investigate and check facts. In some cases there is not a clear-cut right or wrong answer. In others, issues may not be able to be addressed by M&S alone and require wider engagement with governments, industry and other stakeholders.
We have both internal and external channels available for any party wishing to raise a concern, anonymously if required. We use a generic framework depending on the nature of the issue and local circumstances:
- Initial assessment of the complaint
- Internal investigation which may involve an independent third party
- Consultation and mediation with all parties
- If no agreement is forthcoming within a reasonable timeframe we reserve the right to decide on the outcome
Employees and direct suppliers | Employee grievances Employee grievances may include concerns around terms and conditions of employment, health and safety, work relations, bulling and harassment, new working practices, working environment, organisational changes and discrimination. Several of which may also be considered human rights breaches if significant enough. Staff independent of the grievance will investigate and seek to resolve the grievance and ensure all issues and concerns are also assessed on their possible human rights impacts Whistleblowing In most instances, we hope that individuals would feel they can raise concerns with their line manager. However, if they feel that this is not possible they can be raised via an independent and external facility. This facility is managed by Safecall and reporting can be done by phone (if you are an employee) or online in multiple languages via Safecall’s secure web reporting facility: https://www.safecall.co.uk/report. Individuals can also write to the M&S Group Secretary directly if they prefer. Once concerns have been reported either via the phone or online to Safecall, a unique case number is generated which allows for confidential dialogue to take place between the parties (e.g. should there be any further questions to ask). This includes situations where the party wishes to remain anonymous. It also enables feedback to be provided (e.g. progress status). All issues and concerns raised via this mechanism are reviewed by a senior manager in the M&S Investigation Team (part of the Corporate Governance team) who will either investigate themselves or pass it onto the relevant individual or team within the business to investigate. This includes situations which either does or could relate to human rights. All concerns will be taken seriously, fully investigated and appropriate action taken. All investigations conducted are also reported to our Audit Committee which is a committee of the M&S Board that deals with internal control and risk identification even where no wrongdoing has been found. |
Supply chain | All our suppliers are covered by our Global Sourcing Principles which require them to have their own grievance mechanisms in place. We also expect our suppliers to prohibit retaliation against workers or other stakeholders (including those that represent them) for raising concerns. To support our suppliers to create effective mechanisms we are rolling out our workplace communications toolkit and piloting new mobile technology tools such as Labor Link. Where local and site based mechanisms fail, an individual or organisation can raise a complaint with us. They must be either directly affected by the issue or have a mandate to represent individuals or communities directly affected. During audits, our independent auditors leave calling cards with confidential phone numbers for workers to use to allow concerns to be raised after the audit has taken place. Concerns may also be reported via an independent and external facility. This facility is managed by Safecall and reporting can be done online in multiple languages via Safecall’s secure web reporting facility: https://www.safecall.co.uk/report. The complaint can be submitted in the individual’s or organisation’s own language. Once concerns have been reported online to Safecall, a unique case number is generated which allows for confidential dialogue to take place between the parties (e.g. should there be any further questions to ask). This includes situations where the party wishes to remain anonymous. It also enables feedback to be provided (e.g. progress status). All issues and concerns raised via this mechanism are reviewed by a senior manager in the M&S Investigation Team (part of the Corporate Governance team) who will pass it onto either the Food Group Senior Ethical Trade and Human Rights Manager or Head of Ethical Trading Clothing & Home to investigate. We endeavour to acknowledge receipt within 2 working days (5 working days if in a language other than English). Our goal will always be to assess and then investigate all legitimate complaints and promote their resolution in the quickest possible timeframe. The complaint will be considered to have been resolved at an initial stage if and when the parties agree on a plan for remedial action to address the issue. Complaints vary in scale, complexity and geographical origin so it is not possible to say how long it will take to reach a resolution. The issue may be resolved in a matter of weeks or it could take months or even years. We will, however, always strive to keep all parties regularly informed (in their local language) of the steps that are being taken and the results of the process. Find out more about our grievance procedure for Clothing, Home and Food supply chains. We will also work with our suppliers to remedy adverse impacts. The OECD’s National Contact Points mechanism can be used in instances where individuals or communities feel they cannot raise a concern with us directly (see ‘Non-M&S grievance mechanisms’ below). |
External individuals and communities | Our grievance mechanism is accessible to all external individuals or communities to raise complaints or concerns about M&S or its suppliers. Concerns may be reported via an independent and external facility. This facility is managed by Safecall and reporting can be done online in multiple languages via Safecall’s secure web reporting facility: https://www.safecall.co.uk/report. The complaint can be submitted in the individual’s or organisation’s own language. We endeavour to acknowledge receipt within 2 working days (5 working days if in a language other than English). Once concerns have been reported online to Safecall, a unique case number is generated which allows for confidential dialogue to take place between the parties (e.g. should there be any further questions to ask). This includes situations where the party wishes to remain anonymous. It also enables feedback to be provided (e.g. progress status). All issues and concerns raised via this mechanism are reviewed by a senior manager in the M&S Investigation Team (part of the Corporate Governance team) who will either investigate themselves or pass it onto the Corporate Head of Human Rights to investigate.
Our goal will always be to assess and then investigate all legitimate complaints and promote their resolution in the quickest possible timeframe. The complaint will be considered to have been resolved at an initial stage if and when the parties agree on a plan for remedial action to address the issue. Complaints vary in scale, complexity and geographical origin so it is not possible to say how long it will take to reach a resolution. The issue may be resolved in a matter of weeks or it could take months or even years. We will, however, always strive to keep all parties regularly informed (in their local language) of the steps that are being taken and the results of the process. Alternatively, the OECD’s National Contact Points mechanism can be used in instances where individuals or communities feel they cannot raise a concern with us directly (see ‘Non-M&S grievance mechanisms’ below). |
If a party is unhappy with the outcome they would be invited to raise the issue with the Corporate Head of Human Rights who will review the case with the independent Human Rights Stakeholder Advisory Group for a final decision. If the party is still dissatisfied with the outcome and the actions taken by M&S then they can refer the issue or complaint to the relevant National Contact Point.
Our approach to receipt of and response to grievances is evolving. And whilst we strive to have effective mechanisms in place, we recognise this is an area where have much to learn. We are, however, absolutely committed to promoting the channels through which individuals and communities who may be adversely impacted by our operations can raise complaints or concerns.
During 2016/17, we carried out a critical review of grievance mechanisms available both for individuals and communities, including our employees and supply chain and the extent to which issues are effectively raised within our business. This involved a critique against the effectiveness criteria for non-judicial grievance mechanisms set out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and developing a better understanding of our existing processes, identifying what reporting data is available and using a cross-business survey to assess awareness and adoption. We have identified some opportunities to improve our employees understanding of what channels are available within the business. We can also improve at an operational level, particularly in unifying the way we handle and follow up on grievances. From 2020, we will report annual on the use and performance of the mechanisms.
Find out more about our approach to responding to stakeholder concerns on human rights.
Collaborating with others to support and respect human rights
Key documents