Corporate Social Responsibility Report

For the past two years, Walmart Canada has worked proactively with our core group of strategic suppliers around the world to help raise standards and practices through our Supplier Development Program (SDP). Walmart is the first global retailer to apply a proactive approach with its suppliers on such a comprehensive scale.

If one of our strategic suppliers receives an Orange audit assessment indicating high risk violations, we will work with them directly to investigate and repair the root causes of the violations and these may go through Orange School Plus. Our Supplier Development Program is proactively focused to help prevent factories from going to an orange rating. Currently, we have 190 suppliers in the program.

Starting with an evaluation of the supplier’s current practices, the program aims to provide them with the core management systems and tools they will need to monitor their supply chain in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.

An intensive approach

The program is holistic in nature – Walmart dedicates a team of Supplier Development Specialists over a period of nine to 12 months to improve policies, procedures and practices:

• recruiting, selecting, hiring and training workers
• managing wages, benefits, production and work hours
• rewarding and promoting workers
• communicating with workers
• ensuring workers meet certain standards of behaviour
• managing harassment and abuse
• managing environmental impacts

Once a strategic supplier completes the program successfully, the supplier is ready to recognize and anticipate challenges around working conditions and environmental standards. The supplier is engaged at a deeper level into their own business which makes them also engaged with Walmart at a proactive level.