Our partners' autonomous srp (socially responsible in production)

The objectives of this programme are:
■ steer our suppliers towards a sustainable and constantly improving socially responsible performance through self-assessment tools;
■ foster our partners' agility and efficiency of through independent local decision-making.
To get their autonomous certification, Decathlon partners have to meet several criteria demonstrating social impact risks are well and truly managed autonomously through reliable systems and transparent information sharing. These criteria are:
■ have at least scored B on the DECATHLON SRP assessment checklist scale;
■ demonstrate high performance and constant improvement of socially responsible indicators;
■ be supported by an in-house auditor whose training has been approved by DECATHLON;
■ conduct at least one self-assessment a year using Decathlon's audit checklist and share the results;
■ organise each year a Commitment and Well-being Survey to assess employees' level of well-being, while ensuring their confidentiality.

In 2022, 45 partner sites took part in the Autonomous SRP programme. 11 supplier sites have already acquired their autonomous certification in 2022.
Autonomous suppliers will subsequently have to renew their certification half as often as their initial audit frequency (e.g. Initial frequency: two years; post-certification frequency: 4 years).

Employees' commitment is vital to the continued improvement of working conditions in manufacturing. Thanks to suppliers' self-assessment of their social impact risks and this new survey tool, we now have a 360° overview of what goes on within different sites, subsequently enabling us to define areas of progress. This project also provides us with the unique opportunity to identify the social impact issues that we will have to address in the future, and will shape our processes at the United level. By using the survey developed by Nike®, we want to join forces with other major companies in the sector to let employees in manufacturing express themselves more freely and confidently while respecting their right to privacy; it also prevents duplication of tools and requirements we make of our suppliers and their employees.

To help us roll out the Commitment and Well-being Survey, we called upon several external providers, of which the main ones are Labour solutions and KNO. These two companies adapt to each supplier's situation to provide them with personalised support (Internet access, smartphone availability, language spoken by employees etc.) and guarantee respondents' confidentiality and simplified access. The survey covers six themes:skills development, communication, work stress, pay, health/safety, and social relations. Once the results have been analysed, and with the support of our external providers, our partners put action plans in effect to address their employees' needs and develop routines committed to ensuring a regular follow-up.

We have already surveyed over 15,000 employees working on six manufacturing sites, and the first results are very encouraging.At our OMAX supplier, for example, the weekly employee participation rate reached 76%.

Thirteen corrective measures have been put in place following the first survey, and we were able to observe a 5% drop in the staff turnover rate.

100% of managers are said to be satisfied and want to maintain this programme, enabling them to understand their employees' expectations better.
 On the strength of these initial results, we aim to roll out the Commitment and Well-being Survey to 40 manufacturing sites in 2022.