Investigating auditing of responsibility

When arranging a tendering process, we extensively investigate responsibility issues and set requirements concerning them. A challenge is monitoring compliance with the requirements during the agreement period, however, especially in the case of environmental and social responsibility. We have automated the monitoring of financial responsibility during the agreement period.

In 2018, we studied the opportunity to realise social responsibility audits. Previously, we visited Sweden to see how our colleagues there have handled their responsibility auditing by outsourcing it to the private sector. The purpose of the investigation was to determine whether there are such private sector companies in Finland and, if so, whether they have responsibility audit expertise.

The investigation results were encouraging. There are several companies with experience of responsibility audits in Finland, and some of them also have several verification certificates. Some of the companies are Finnish and others are Finnish subsidiaries of foreign companies. Many of them have extensive networks that they can use to perform supply chain audits in high-risk countries.

The attitude of companies in the industry towards Hansel’s survey was positive, and we received strong messages from some of them that the public sector should also start to carry out responsibility audits. We believe that in Finland, social responsibility audits are mainly carried out by large international private sector enterprises.

In 2017, Hansel used an extensive Code of Conduct procedure for contractual suppliers in its audits for the first time. It also enables the performance of responsibility audits. Furthermore, the contractual terms enable the sharing of audit results with other joint procurement units operating in the EU. Our plan is to start the first social responsibility audit pilot project by the end of 2019.