Supplier monitoring and risk mitigation
Effective monitoring and risk mitigation of Telenor’s supply chain is paramount to the business as a whole and to the societies in which we operate. Local inspections, action plan follow-up and industry collaboration all help to improve our supply chain efforts.
Telenor carries out local inspections in all our markets to monitor compliance with Telenor’s Supplier Conduct Principles. The global pandemic reinforced the need for an even more resilient and secure supply chain for business continuity and success. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the local teams across Telenor continued to monitor supply chain activities through 2201 onsite inspections and complemented these with 1359 virtual health and safety checks when they were unable to travel to the worksites. Most of the inspections (83 per cent) were carried out unannounced. These inspections resulted in the identification of more than 1051 major non-conformities, which have been followed up with mitigation plans and processes to monitor them until they are closed.
Joint Audit Cooperation
Telenor is an active participant in the Joint Audit Cooperation (JAC), a cooperation of 17 mobile operators focusing on the social, ethical and environmental conditions across their supply chains. Through our participation, Telenor gained access to the results of 74 sustainability audits of global suppliers in 2020. A standard JAC audit is often conducted over two days and focuses mainly on preventive anti-corruption programmes, labour rights and working conditions, as well as health, safety and the environment.
After carrying out an audit, a Corrective Action Plan (CAP) listing all findings is agreed upon between the auditee and the auditor, and followed up until closure.
Actions for risk mitigation
Monitoring our supply chain and identifying and mitigating risks are key tasks that we believe are best handled at a local level, with support from and reporting to Telenor Group. That is why each Telenor business unit has people working locally on a regular basis on supply chain sustainability.
We focus on the impact of our monitoring activities, rather than the activities themselves, as this gives a better assessment of improvements made through our efforts in raising standards in the supply chain.
In addition to inspections and audits, Telenor uses supplier self-assessments as an important part of the supply chain monitoring activity. These are carried out as parts of procurement processes, an annual global process and for ad-hoc supplier risk assessments.
EcoVadis risk rating
Telenor is using EcoVadis as a risk-rating system for global suppliers to increase monitoring of their sustainability performance. The EcoVadis platform is an external tool that measures a company’s performance based on a wide range of sustainability criteria and is a well-recognised tool used by a high number of buyers across many industries, including telecommunications. The purpose of using EcoVadis is to measure sustainability performance based on verified external information, reduce risks and integrate sustainability into the sourcing processes.
In the spirit of continuous improvement, Telenor will focus on refining processes, systems and procedures for effective risk management in its supply chain.