Case study: How Infosys promotes sustainability among its suppliers

What are the material issues the company has identified?   

In its 2019-20 Sustainability Report Infosys identified a range of material issues, such as economic performance, employee well-being, community engagement, emissions, water and effluents. Among these, promoting sustainability among its suppliers stands out as a key material issue for Infosys.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The reporting organization shall identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations and interests.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups Infosys engages with:  

To identify and prioritise material topics Infosys engaged with its stakeholders through the following channels:

What actions were taken by Infosys to promote sustainability among its suppliers?

In its 2019-20 Sustainability Report Infosys reports that it took the following actions for promoting sustainability among its suppliers:

• Identifying, assessing and mitigating supply chain risks
• Infosys has developed a third-party risk assessment framework which seeks to identify, assess, mitigate, control, reduce or eliminate real or potential risk exposure to its supply chain performance. The framework identifies risk across the supplier process, that is, pre-contract and evaluation, contract execution, ongoing and post-exit. As a part of the pre-contract and evaluation stage, Infosys performs exhaustive due diligence of suppliers in the areas of sanctions, corruption, financial crimes, litigations and ESG issues at the time of on-boarding and periodically thereafter, with the help of a third-party tool. This assessment covers compliance, information security, physical security and sustainability based on the type of vendor. Risk-based audits of selected suppliers are also conducted.

• Promoting compliance
• Infosys’s Supplier Code of Conduct is administered to all key suppliers, and its agreement with vendors includes a mandate to comply with local laws and regulations. Infosys also expects its suppliers to support and respect internationally proclaimed human rights guidelines and make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses. Infosys’s contracts have appropriate clauses and checks to prevent the employment of child labour or forced labour in any form. Infosys also provides forums, where suppliers can voice their concerns and issues.

Which GRI Standards and corresponding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been addressed?

The GRI Standards addressed in this case are:

1) Disclosure 308-1 New suppliers that were screened using environmental criteria

2) Disclosure 414-1 New suppliers that were screened using social criteria

Disclosure 308-1 New suppliers that were screened using environmental criteria does not correspond to any SDG.

Disclosure 414-1 New suppliers that were screened using social criteria corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender Equality
• Targets: 5.2
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Targets: 8.8
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
• Targets: 16.1

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

SustainCase was primarily created to demonstrate, through case studies, the importance of dealing with a company’s most important impacts in a structured way, with use of the GRI Standards. To show how today’s best-run companies are achieving economic, social and environmental success – and how you can too.

Research by well-recognised institutions is clearly proving that responsible companies can look to the future with optimism.

7 GRI sustainability disclosures get you started

Any size business can start taking sustainability action

GRI, IEMA, CPD Certified Sustainability courses (2-5 days): Live Online or Classroom  (venue: London School of Economics)

• Exclusive FBRH template to begin reporting from day one
• Identify your most important impacts on the Environment, Economy and People
• Formulate in group exercises your plan for action. Begin taking solid, focused, all-round sustainability action ASAP. 
• Benchmarking methodology to set you on a path of continuous improvement

See upcoming training dates.
References:

This case study is based on published information by Infosys, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the following link:

https://www.infosys.com/sustainability/documents/infosys-sustainability-report-2019-20.pdf

Note to Infosys: With each case study we send out an email requesting a comment on this case study. If you have not received such an email please contact us.