A Bridge to the Future

Zhu Hai, a factory town, along China’s Pearl Delta, is feeling an awful lot like Vancouver right now, cloudy, misty and chilly.  The city aside from its Pacific Coast like weather is undergoing a massive construction to connect itself to Hong Kong via a 50 km stretch of bridges and tunnels.  To put this span in perspective, the longest suspended portion is 23 km which is 46 times the length of Vancouver’s Lion Gate Bridge (.4 km) or for our American friends, almost ten times “Golden Gate Bridge end to end.  But forget this trivia, the bridge is more than just physically tying two great cities, it’s linking the old industrial economy of Zhu Hai to the knowledge intensive one of Hong Kong.

 

Our supplier in Zhu Hai is tying its compliance program to the future.  First it’s decided against a program of audits every six months as this doesn’t accomplish a whole lot other than repeatedly remind every one of the same challenges.   Instead, it’s taken compliance and put it where it be belongs, in the operations of the factory.  In this facility, the top manager and his human resources supervisor “own” the compliance function.  In theory this makes ethical sourcing more real as it is driven by individuals.  

 

Authority  alone is not sufficient to making factories good.  There needs to be involvement by workers.  In Shenzhen, our contract facility has adopted a worker/management/NGO approach to compliance.  In this model, workers and management under the supervision of the not-for-profit Fair Labour Association and MEC, identify the problems on the plant and together with external expertise if needed, work out the solutions.  This collaborative approach to compliance fosters more balance as the views of the workers are given equal weight to those of management.  

 

Many factories and brands complain about the traditional audit every-six-months approach because it doesn’t lead to substantive change.  In fact it ties up time and money.  In addition, a traditional audit doesn’t capture the cause of a problem or its depth.  For the most part it only provides an indication of a problem.  Subsequent exploratory work is needed to validate and quantify the non compliance at hand. 

 

Nevertheless, an audit is important.  It’s able to flag if kids are employed or if work conditions are egregious to the extent that serious harm is immediately likely.  A traditional audit is an assurance and depending on its findings, can bring comfort to buyers and consumers.    

 

Zhu Hai is changing.  It’s gone from a fishing village to a labour intensive industrial center in a mere span of 30 years.  Today, it’s embarked on a path to become a knowledge intensive hub like Silicon Valley.   Connecting itself to Hong Kong will help make this goal real.

 

Compliance is also undergoing a change.  Twenty years ago, compliance was only about auditing and re-auditing.  Today it’s more sophisticated.  It's become a part of factory operations, where management and workers identify critical issues and co-develop remedies.  This is more sustainable than traditional audits and its a bridge to the future of compliance.