By Adam Turteltaub

An ethical audit is one that evaluates compliance with laws and regulations but also assess a vendor against ethical standards, explains Bruno Drummond, Senior Director, Global Compliance at DHL Supply Chain. These standards could come from an industry or other external organization or your company’s own code of conduct.  They likely would cover issues such as human rights, child labor, forced labor, discrimination, unfair and inhumane employment, working condition and even your supply chain’s own supply chain.

Why should you conduct one? Because these days regulators, enforcement and the public require it.

For a company such as DHL, with is heavily committed to ESG, ethical audits are at the top of their list. It’s a part of the company’s commitment to clean operations, being a good place to work and highly trusted.

DHL was first exposed to ethical audits when a customer conducted one of them. Seeing the value in it they adopted it themselves.

The audits are conducted both remotely and at customer locations. The DHL code of conduct is the benchmark against which the audit is conducted. Included in the process are roundtables with employees, interviews with managers and an office walk through.

Because of the cost, Bruno recommends taking a risk-based approach and looking at a cross-section of your supply chain when conducting these audits.

Listen in to learn more about the process and whether it’s time for your organization to embrace ethical audits.