Procurement Responsibilities
No diversity me
12 DIVERSITY AGENDA
Procurement Responsibilities
If you are responsible for sales and marketing or procurement in your organisation, or if you are involved in HR or diversity, you need to read this.
More and more organisations are now forcing the diversity agenda via their supply chains by setting very detailed and challenging diversity standards for suppliers. And in many cases failing to meet those standards will mean no chance to even bid for contracts.
Supplier diversity has been talked about for years in the UK without much impact. However, during 2006 we have seen several high profile initiatives in the UK which are really causing CEO’ s to sit up and take notice. For example:
• Three Civil Service pilot schemes( Jobcentre Plus, the Identity & Passport Agency and the Department for Education & Skills), in which bidders for £ multi – million government contracts will be rejected if they do not meet diversity criteria.
• Transport for London’ s( TfL) supply chain diversity requirements of bidders on high value contracts, in which potential bidders are rejected if they do not meet detailed diversity criteria.
• Barclays plans to call on its legal advisers to provide diversity statistics on their gender and ethnic make – up.
We know quite a lot about the TfL item as we have just helped a major construction client to pass their rigorous diversity standards, and I mean rigorous! Those failing to meet their supplier diversity criteria do not even get to bid for their contracts.
The trend can only continue and gather pace. So expect to have more discussions about supplier diversity sometime soon, if you have not already. And expect your board to be taking a close interest too. engage | uk ISSUE THREE 2007