In Part 1 we talked to Ninian Wilson, CPO at Vodafone, about how the organisation is embedding sustainable and purposeful behaviours into its procurement activities and its supply chain. (Part 1 is here)
Wilson also sees that staff in Vodafone respond to the sustainability agenda. “People engage with the diversity and inclusion agenda, and the planet issues. I’m proud that we’ve been able to help people through Covid, keeping people engaged – even if Zoom isn’t as good as a coffee or a beer!”
We asked how Vodafone procurement is actually implementing some of the purpose-related ideas. “We’re changing our tendering processes to reflect diversity, inclusion and planet issues, as well as safety and risk issues where relevant. That means hard scoring that goes into every tender. On some recent bids that’s been 10% on safety and risk, 5% on diversity and 5% on planet issues - so sustainability-related issues can be 20% of scoring. That will change buying decisions”.
As Wilson says, it is easy to say the right things but “embedding change is the key. So we started talking to suppliers about safety years ago, but we didn’t really see a difference until we embedded that in tenders. Since then we’ve improved our safety record by 90%. When it affects marking and scoring, that’s when the rubber hits the road”.
But Wilson acknowledges there is more to do on enriching data. “We’ve joined a couple of groups including the blockchain-based IBM Trust Your Supplier initiative. Many of our large suppliers have really good programmes too that we can learn from. Then we’re producing educational materials to help our smaller suppliers. They want to know how to do this, and we need to make sure SMEs aren’t disadvantaged through this. We noticed recently on some of our proof of concepts, the smaller firms were struggling with our mandatory questions in tenders, so we need to help them”.
Vodafone have also looked at paying smaller suppliers faster – paying 15 days from invoice, which is excellent practice. Wilson is looking at how to handle that issue longer term too. “90 day payment terms for small suppliers may not be the right approach”.
He has also looked to reach out to other top companies on this issue; “the power of scale” as he puts it. “If we can get to £100 billion rather than the £20 billion of Vodafone spend, that can really create momentum”, he says. “I want to learn from companies who are ahead of us, including learning from their mistakes”. There is also work with other external interested organisations, such as Stonewall in the equality area. “We’re looking at how to embed diversity in tenders, and we will share learning with others”.
And of course Vodafone will talk about their programmes when the firm bids for work with their customers, including government. “I think as we start coming back out of COVID, people are going to be way more selective who they work with, and who they pay money to”.
The firm is also looking at SIM cards and how to reduce plastic use. “There are billions of cards in use, and that’s increasing because of their use in Internet of Things devices. So we’ve saved 500 tonnes of plastic by putting more than one SIM on a card, and we’ve moved away from plastic bags in Vodafone shops. We’re making equipment vendors think about more energy efficiency too - this benefits everybody so it’s also just great business sense”.
We asked whether the circular economy was being considered in terms of spend areas such as equipment. “We’re thinking about it, but we’re not there yet”. But despite Wilson playing down this area, the firm is doing more than most. There is a huge logistics programme, looking at coordinating and consolidating physical operations to reduce cost and emissions, with forward, reverse and repair supply chains all being considered. There is also an internal marketplace for equipment, so if the UK is going to scrap a piece of kit, it can be offered to other business units first.
“In procurement we see all the equipment coming in and going out – that’s a useful control lever too. Our target is to recycle 100% of network equipment, but that is very challenging, the last 1% is really tough! But if you set challenging targets, you get the right ambition, the right mindset in the company”.
Collaboration is another key theme for Wilson. “We talk to suppliers about their approach to the UN SDGs, to see how they compare with us, and we are learning from them on any issues. For instance, US firms are often ahead of us on diversity issues. You realise how little many of us know - if you are like us, white, affluent, middle-aged straight guys, it is very hard to understand how it feels to be in other shoes. Your people and company need to be open and work to understand to these issues”.
Another great example of that was the #CodeLikeAGirl programme, launched in partnership with Code First:Girls in 2017 to provide a free, 4 day coding workshop to girls aged 14-18 from 26 countries across the world. “We want to see more women in engineering and science – but we need to support that through the employment life cycle, so that means having good policies in areas such as maternity and paternity leave”.
Wilson says that he is “not a religious man”. But he clearly does believe sincerely, at an ethical and philosophical level, in these approaches and actions.
“If you do them really well, you enable societal change, but as an individual you also feel really good about what you’re doing”. And of course, the firm will be viewed as a better employer, a better place to work, a better investment and a better supplier in its own right.