Our risk assessment takes into account a range of factors including countries with a history of poor labor standards and companies (suppliers and agents) with a record of poor compliance. These are some of the main considerations when determining risk of noncompliance: Factory or agent compliance history; country conditions; is the relationship direct or through an agent; type of factory; size of contract; use of migrant labor; and cultural and language barriers between labor and management.

To maximize our impact within each region, we focus on factories that employ a large number of workers. Any problem in a factory of considerable size has an impact on many people. We particularly focus on those suppliers with a high percentage of migrant workers or where language and cultural barriers exist.

Understanding what is really happening in factories is immensely challenging. We tackle this in two stages: a “threshold audit” to establish whether a new factory is good enough to be approved for production and a “Sustainable Compliance Program” to maintain and improve standards among all our active suppliers. To see how this works, see our FACTORY COMPLIANCE CYCLE.

Whenever credible and verifiable problems are reported, we take swift action to investigate and work with factory management to help develop long-term solutions.