Veit Geise explains how VF Corporation made CSR the first topic in supplier meetings by tying factory audit scores directly to order volume. Starting April 1, lower CSR scores mean less business. The CEO's mandate: responsible sourcing before irresponsible profits.
In the past, CSR was a fairly separated activity within our corporation. It was disconnected from sourcing, so we were watching what the CSR audit results came out from, but it was not really something that we used actively in our, in our day-to-day life. Today, when I sit with my suppliers the first topic on the agenda is the CSR status, and the one thing that we talk the most about is the CSR status. So it has come from being a peripheral item of, of limited interest to the focus point of what's going on in the facilities and what's going on on the CSR side. So we have developed a system where a sliding CSR audit result basically provides you with less volume or results in less FOB volume. So there's a direct connection of as your factory is sliding down the scale of audit results, your volume and your FOB that you're doing with VF Corporation is going down. And we've implemented this on 1st of April, and I expect tremendous improvements on there. So this is a good sign or a good example of to see how business needs to work together with CSR. CSR is a top-down approach. If you take it bottom-up, it ain't gonna work. When you see our CSO is— our CEO in VOF Corporation is very committed to CSR, and he's formed the statement, um, responsible sourcing before irresponsible profits. And that's what we all live by, and that's the CSR team as well as our sourcing team and quality teams.
