pg. 8

"In 2020, we continued our work with the Wilberforce Institute, carrying out awareness training for colleagues in our buying teams and built future risk assessment plans for logistics supply chains. Thanks to the training and the awareness of modern slavery that our work with the Wilberforce Institute has achieved, we have seen a significant increase in whistleblowers coming forward to report allegations of poor worker welfare and labour practices."

pg. 9

"TRAINING ON MODERN SLAVERY AND TRAFFICKING

Throughout 2020 we delivered extensive training on modern slavery to both our own employees and our suppliers. This included partnering with the Slave Free Alliance to create a modern slavery e-learning module for all our suppliers outlining our ethical requirements, and delivering labour exploitation risk assessment training for our produce buying teams.

We collaborated with a number of other retailers, suppliers, performance management platform nGaje, the Food Network for Ethical Trade (FNET) and the Association of Labour Providers (ALP) to deliver a webinar series to educate the food, horticulture and agriculture industries on how to better manage the risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Further information regarding this can be found here. We also updated all of our induction training for office-based colleagues to heavily focus on modern slavery awareness.

Training for employees

In 2020, Aldi UK and Slave-Free Alliance jointly developed modern slavery e-Learning modules to raise awareness of the issue of modern slavery and how to report it, including case study examples from Aldi’s supply chain. The training was developed for Aldi employees and has been rolled out to all UK office and operational staff down to hiring managers.

Due to COVID-19, we were unable to roll the training out to store level staff, but recognise the importance of this and will aim to do so even more widely in the course of our three-year modern slavery strategy.

We have also developed a version of this training for our suppliers, which is currently being delivered to all our direct supply chain including GNFR."

In 2020, access to training resources in the Responsible Recruitment Toolkit (RRT) were made free to all of our suppliers. Suppliers of Aldi can also access a free place on RRT webinars (p. 10)

Ticked Leadership because:

All Aldi Buying Directors and managers are trained by the Corporate Responsibility Department on how to work with suppliers to uphold the ethical standards that we set.  

For suppliers specific to the garment sector:

The Aldi Factory Advancement (AFA) Project is an initiative we introduced to strengthen cooperative working relations between workers and managers at production facilities that produce our textile goods in Bangladesh. The project brings together the workers, managers and owners of the relevant production facilities to address problems in their production facilities. The training covers topics such as establishing effective communication structures, health and safety in the workplace, remuneration and private financial planning, data, quality management and productivity (p.12)