Hansel employees share their expertise

Several of Hansel’s employees give regular lectures about public procurement at a variety of events. In 2018, such events took place at the following:

• Metropolia University of Applied Sciences
• HAUS
• Association of Finnish Lawyers
• Finnish Government
• Public Procurement Advisory Unit
• Aalto Executive Education
• OECD

Responsibility Morning: Procurement can be effective if you know what to require

Hansel’s first Responsibility Morning event was arranged in April 2018. Many customers were interested in the event, and more than 60 participants came to hear about social responsibility in the electronics industry. Kirsi Koivusaari from Hansel, Anu Kultalahti from Finnwatch, Linda Piirto from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and Laura Kuistio from the Finnish Transport Agency, among others, spoke about responsibility efforts at the event.

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) form the basis for corporate social responsibility. According to the UNGPs, governments are obligated to secure human rights and companies are obligated to respect human rights. Promotion of social responsibility is a continuous process with monitoring and reporting as its integral parts. The protection of human rights involves several challenges, such as ensuring that human rights are followed in the entire supply chain or determining what is a sufficient salary based on the living expenses in each country, but we can succeed in these efforts if we share our best practices.

During the short history of social responsibility, the discussion has become clearly more varied. Agreeing as a united front is the most effective way of promoting responsibility, but organisations also need to create their own, clear practices for their responsibility efforts. Decisions must be made on who is responsible for the efforts, who will monitor compliance and how reporting will be handled. Social responsibility is not an issue that involves faraway countries only: it is also present in our daily work in Finland. Also in our work, human rights issues are linked to occupational health and safety, coping at work, diversity and customer privacy protection, for example.

Responsible electronics production

Tero Lehtisaari spoke about a shared computer procurement responsibility project of Hansel and Finnwatch. Tools to promote social responsibility in public procurement were created and a tendering process for a computer framework agreement was arranged during the project period.

“The results were good, and they are available for anyone to read in Finnwatch’s report called Sanoista tekoihin (From Words to Action). We hope that the results will be widely utilised. Now, we want to assist our customers in determining their own responsibility-related quality criteria for their own simplified tendering processes,” Tero Lehtisaari hinted.

Suppliers of the computer framework agreement and representatives of Finnwatch and ethical trading association Eetti were able to describe their views on corporate social responsibility in a panel discussion led by Hansel’s Kalle Hietaranta.

The event was concluded by Karolina Lehto from Hansel telling how legislation encourages the promotion of responsibility. Requirements for public procurement are included not only in procurement legislation, but also in environmental and energy efficiency legislation, for example. Responsibility must be considered from the very beginning of a procurement project, the selection of the procurement object, followed by the setting of supplier requirements and the description of the object of procurement. The procurement unit can clearly express its wishes to the tenderers in the criteria for comparison and the contractual terms, in particular.