The OIA Social Responsibility Working Group will take a leadership role to develop fair labor tools, programs, education and communication to stakeholders that will direct sourcing, product life cycle and informed purchasing decisions. Membership is open to all companies within the global outdoor industry supply chain. Stakeholders outside of the supply chain that are determined to be vital to success of the effort may be invited to participate. The group is chaired by Sandra Cho of Columbia Sportswear and Colleen Von Haden of Timberland.

Mission
To advance social responsibility awareness, standards, innovation, and practices in the outdoor industry value chain, from concept to consumer, through culturally-sensitive;
• education and engagement,
• development and promotion of best practices,
• measuring and reporting effectiveness of action.

Scope (Phase 1)
Social issues parameters
The focus of phase 1 of the SRWG Social Index is in the advancement of Fair labor and EHS practices at the supplier (manufacturing) level.  Phase 1 will include two significant initiatives that allow for both the assessment/ranking of suppliers based on harmonized SR criterion and adoption of these assessment methods by all brands within the outdoor industry.  These two initiatives are as follows;

1) Guidelines and Indicators:
– Providing a roadmap/value chain of supply chain level assessment initiatives (i.e. FLA, WRAP, ILO, etc.), with weighted indicators for overall supplier ranking.
– Regional mapping of issues
– Existing toolkit (integration – web-based, modular)
– Tools for Supplier self assessment to create and implement owned code of conduct
– Tools for Retailers to assess the Brands efforts towards social responsibility at a supplier level. This may include a self assessment guideline/questionnaire, etc.
– Training tools for translating social responsibility issues into sourcing best practices and guidelines.
– Housing of tools, templates, educational material/sites (upcoming guidelines – legislative)
– Collaboration (rules of engagement)
 
2) Adoption (including training plan):
– Qualifiers (indicator) of applying OIA social index – toolkit
– Means to declare commitment at brand and supplier level
– Present business cases of successful initiatives
– Internal practices/ decision making impact on suppliers/ supply chain
– Create a list of suppliers with qualifying criterion
– Collaboration (other initiatives/contacts, mentoring, sharing, education)

For more information or to join the Social Responsibility Working Group, please contact eco@outdoorindustry.org.

Download Fair Labor Toolkit