Interview by Oliver Balch, Ethical Corporation
Louise Nicholls has worked for Marks & Spencer (M&S) for over 20 years, leading the retailer’s ethical trade programme for over a decade. She formed part of the small team that developed the company's Plan A, a 100-point, five-year plan to address a wide range of environmental and social issues. Louise was also instrumental in setting up the supplier data exchange initiative, Sedex. Much of her time is spent travelling the world to meet and interact with M&S’ global supply base.
Louise Nicholls is one of over 40 speakers taking part in the 2014 Responsible Business Summit (May 19-20) in London. The Summit will discuss responsible business leadership and lifecycle innovation, covering how to measure sustainability to the power of brands to engage consumers on sustainable issues and the power of digital in communicating corporate responsibility.
Ethical Corporation: M&S is investing considerable finance and human resources in promoting responsible sourcing. What motivates this investment?
Louise Nicholls: If we work with workplaces that have really engaged employees, good management systems and safe working conditions, then the evidence shows a very clear set of business benefits. It [responsible business practice] reduces staff absenteeism and it’s often associated with higher productivity and quality too. So there is a clear win-win for us as a business.
We also know that the more we understand the supply chain, then the more opportunities open up to us as a business. End-to-end supply chain mapping helps us to become more efficient, for instance. It enables us to be much more resilient too because we understand where we source from and what the possible risks are. The ability to identify unique points of difference, as well as to explore new emerging products and new models of working also sets our business at an advantage.
Ethical Corporation: What would you define as the key components of M&S’ approach to responsible sourcing?
Louise Nicholls: We have a three-point strategy essentially. The first is about building awareness. Whatever issue we’re looking at, it’s vital to set very clear standards and to communicate clearly about what we expect our suppliers to do. It’s about having some simple tools to help engage them. That’s where an initiative such as Sedex [a supplier data exchange] is so important. Sedex provides one common communication, which tells people what ethical trade is about and what suppliers have to do to comply.
The second element of our strategy revolves around building capacity. This has been massive for us. We don’t want suppliers to have the mindset, ‘we do this because our customers tells us to do this.’ We want to take them on a journey so they can understand why responsible business is important to their business. One of the ways we do this is by running training programmes for workers to address the root cause of bad practice.
The final part centres on embedding good practice into how our suppliers and ourselves do business. This is about finding mechanisms to make responsible practices really business relevant. For example, we tell our people that every product must have a sustainability attribute by 2020, as defined by Plan A [M&S’s sustainability target-driven strategy]. We also have balance scorecards, where we give equal merit to sustainability performance as we do to commercial and technical improvements.
Ethical Corporation: What advice would you give to others when it comes to engaging suppliers on the need for responsible business?
Louise Nicholls: First, be really clear about what the requirements are. Keep it simple and clarify the ways of working so people are encouraged to participate. It’s imperative to build trust with suppliers at the outset as well. If not, you run the risk of suppliers hiding information and telling us what they think we want to hear. Another thing we’ve learnt relates to data paralysis. Asking for too much information can leave you unable to see the wood for the trees. So it’s about being really targeted about what data it is that you want, and then being clear on how you’re going to proactively use it to drive something forward.
Ethical Corporation: M&S is involved in a wide range of industry and cross-sector initiatives to promote responsible sourcing. Why do you see collaboration in this space as so important?
Louise Nicholls: It’s partly about leveraging. M&S is actually quite a small retailer globally so collaborating allows us to move at a faster pace. Partnerships enable us to identify common areas of alignment. Collectively, we can then put all our energy into driving action around these areas in a much harder and faster way than we could on our own.
Collaboration works best when there is less talk and more action. People work much better when they are learning together as well. In that vein, it’s important to recognise when some collaborations have run their course. Collaborations are often good for a period of time, but sometimes they can grow a little stale. You shouldn’t keep pushing at something that’s no longer working.
Ethical Corporation: You’ll be speaking about responsible sourcing at the 2014 Responsible Business Summit on 20th May. What are you hoping to get out of the event?
Louise Nicholls: I’ll be looking to share information, best practice and exchange ideas with contemporaries and leaders in sustainability. The scale and ambition of Plan A cannot be achieved by M&S acting alone, therefore events like this offer us the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with others that are facing similar challenges.
You can download your brochure here for the 13th annual Responsible Business Summit. The event is organised by the Ethical Corporation, providing business intelligence for sustainability, the corporation has 3,000 customers a year, ranging from NGOs, think-tanks, academia, governments and service providers to the corporate sustainability industry.