SAI Announces Enhanced Corporate Programs Membership

SAI is pleased to announce its newly enhanced Corporate Programs, which seek to enable more interaction and shared learning among all members.

Offered at no increased cost, this revised membership program provides companies with greater access to SAI's sophisticated supply chain management training- including Social Fingerprint^® - multi-stakeholder input, and the ability to confidentially benchmark their programs against other members.

The changes are designed to benefit current members, which include companies from a range of industries, in addition to all incoming members. The three levels of Corporate Programs membership - Supporting, Explorer and Signatory - each will offer added services. Some of the new services for companies and their suppliers were developed in response to member input.

According to Craig Moss, Director of SAI's Corporate Programs & Training, the new membership program is a great opportunity for a company to help expand its professional development to tackle critical social issues in the supply chain.

"The enhancements in SAI's Corporate Programs aim to increase the cost-effectiveness of helping companies measure and improve the social performance of their supply chains," said Moss. "Several of the new services were created in response to input from our members, in particular those that will increase shared learning and allow companies to benchmark against each other."

All Corporate Program members will sign on to a Statement of Shared Mission, which states the philosophy of the program- to 'measure and improve' the management of social performance in a company's supply chain. Companies will express respect for SAI and its global SA8000^® through placement of a public statement: "As a Corporate Member of SAI, we share the mission to improve working conditions in our supply chain, in accordance with performance criteria based on relevant ILO conventions and national law, utilizing management systems and multi-stakeholder dialogue."

All SAI Corporate members share the same commitment regardless of their Membership level. SAI recognizes that companies joining Corporate Programs vary in their existing performance levels. The goal of Corporate Programs is to promote improvement regardless of a company's level when it joins. There is no inherent performance difference by level of membership.

Specifically, SAI Corporate Members commit to:

1. Use a management systems approach to improve social performance in their supply chains.
2. Participate in the Social Fingerprint^® Supply Chain Management program on an annual basis, consisting of:
a. Conduct self-assessment in six categories:
i. Scope and Risk
ii. Aggregate Rating of Suppliers
iii. Annual Improvement of Suppliers
iv. Integration of Compliance & Sourcing
v. Supplier Communications & Purchasing Practices
vi. Complaint Management & Resolution
b. Receive SAI independent evaluation of the 6 categories
c. Review their Supply Chain Management rating, benchmarked against the aggregated scores of other companies, and then engage in dialog with SAI about development and implementation of an improvement plan.

Learn more about SAI Corporate Programs membership levels, services and pricing.

SAI18786