Procter & Gamble

Our new Supplier Sustainability Board is charged with guiding the development of supplier-related Sustainability activities and goals. It includes members from over 20 leading global suppliers.

Supplier Diversity Program

Our consumers, customers, and suppliers become more diverse every day. As a result, our success depends on an ability to understand their changing needs and work effectively with customers and suppliers around the world. Supplier Diversity is one important way we achieve our goal of touching lives and improving life.

In 1972, P&G established a program to identify and work with minority-owned businesses in the United States. Today, the Supplier Diversity Initiative constitutes a fundamental business strategy to identify and work with minority- and women-owned businesses. The Global Vice President—Purchasing serves as its Executive Sponsor.

Minorities continue to become a more substantial part of America’s population, and women remain P&G’s key consumer base. So we are committed to lead in supplier diversity, viewing it as a positive for both our business and the health of the U.S. economy. In 2007 – 2008, spending was more than $2 billion across approximately 2,000 minority- and women-owned suppliers.

Sustainability Guidelines for Supplier Relations

Our Purpose, Values and Principles serve as the foundation of our Sustainability Guidelines for Supplier Relations. We operate within the spirit and letter of the law, maintaining high ethical standards wherever we conduct business. We actively seek business relationships with suppliers who share our values and promote the application of these high standards among those with whom they do business.

Summary of our supplier guidelines:

1. We expect our suppliers to comply with all applicable laws of their country, including laws relating to employment, discrimination, environment, and health and safety. Suppliers who knowingly violate laws or have repeated problems conforming to them will not receive our business.
2. Commercial bribery is illegal and subject to criminal penalties in many countries, including the United States. Any personal payment or bribe to individuals employed by P&G’s customers or suppliers—or receipt of a bribe or personal payment by P&G employees—is strictly prohibited. Even in locations where such activity is not technically illegal, it is absolutely prohibited by Company policy.
3. P&G supports universal human rights, particularly those of our employees, the communities within which we operate, and the parties with whom we do business. In our business award decisions, we place substantial value upon incumbent and potential suppliers who consistently respect basic human rights.
4. P&G utilizes fair employment practices, striving to provide a safe, healthy, and productive work environment for employees. The Company respects employees’ right to freedom of association, third-party consultation, and collective bargaining where allowed by law. The Company expects suppliers to uphold the same standards. Specifically:
   • We will not conduct business with suppliers employing child, prison, indentured, or bonded labor, or using corporal punishment or other forms of mental and physical coercion as a form of discipline.
   • We expect suppliers to conduct their business without unacceptable worker treatment such as harassment, discrimination, physical or mental punishment, or other forms of abuse.
   • At a minimum, we expect our suppliers to comply with all applicable wage and hour laws and rules and regulations, including minimum wage, overtime, and maximum hours.
   • We expect suppliers to provide a safe work environment, to prevent accidents and injury, and to minimize exposure to health risks.
   • We seek to do business with suppliers who share our concerns for and commitment to preserving the environment. At a minimum, suppliers must meet all current and applicable environmental rules, regulations, and laws in their countries.

The management system is owned by the Global Vice President—Purchasing. It has three components:

Communicate: All purchasing personnel who interface with suppliers are trained on the supplier guidelines and how to conduct supplier assessments. We communicate the guidelines to our suppliers once a year and reinforce our expectations in our contracts. This makes compliance with the guidelines a condition of business; therefore, non-compliance is grounds for disqualification for all new and ongoing supply agreements.

Check: Ongoing periodic performance assessments are done as part of regular commercial and technical supplier visits. Emphasis is placed on suppliers that are high-risk because of country of operation or potential hazard. In addition to these internal assessments, we have third-party assessments to identify areas for improvement. Last year we completed a set of third-party assessments in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, and this year we conducted some additional third-party assessments in China. We also upgraded our training material with better examples of potential outages as part of our ongoing training of internal purchasing personnel.

Correct non-compliance: When potential non-compliance issues are identified, they are communicated to the supplier as part of the closing meeting. Corrective actions—including formal notification and a remediation action plan—are then implemented. In some cases we require immediate action to achieve compliance, or we halt business. These include child labor or forced labor, and egregious health and safety violations presenting immediate danger to human health. If a compliance issue is not resolved in a timely manner, the business relationship is terminated.