Hamburger Icon

Target Unit: Procurement

WEConnect Academy

Resource database

Resource Sidebar

ATTRIBUTES
  • Supply Chain

SOURCE
  • WEConnect International

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • OOnline Learning

TARGET AREA
  • Standards and Certifications

TARGET UNIT
  • Procurement

LINK TO RESOURCE

WEConnect Academy

WEConnect International
The WEConnect Academy is an online suite of education and training programs to provide women business owners with a multitude ofresources and information. The programs help women business owners to achieve their growth objectives, learn from experts and fellow WBEs, and gain access to a diverse support network. WEConnect Academy also has invite-only webinars that range from topics of work-life balance, team productivity, and leadership development.

Learn more here.

Global Supplier Diversity & Inclusion – Reaching the Gold Standard

Resource database

Resource Sidebar

ATTRIBUTES
  • Supply Chain

SOURCE
  • WEConnect International

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • GGuide

TARGET AREA
  • Standards and Certifications

TARGET UNIT
  • Procurement

LINK TO RESOURCE

Global Supplier Diversity & Inclusion – Reaching the Gold Standard

WEConnect International
The Gold Standard Checklist helps multinational corporations and multilateral organizations assess their global supplier diversity and inclusion programs and identify improvement areas. The checklist includes five sections and the goal is to reach 100 points – the Gold Standard. Learn more here

WEConnect International – Women’s Business Enterprise (WEB) Certification

Resource database

Resource Sidebar

ATTRIBUTES
  • Supply Chain

SOURCE
  • WEConnect International

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • CCertification

TARGET AREA
  • Standards and Certifications

TARGET UNIT
  • Procurement

LINK TO RESOURCE

WEConnect International – Women's Business Enterprise (WEB) Certification

WEConnect International
WEConnect International’s Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE) Certification allows corporate members to ensure that they are purchasing goods and/or services from women-owned businesses. The certification presents many benefits, such as networking opportunities, training workshops, and forums. There are four requirements for certification:

  • Ownership: A woman or women must hold 51 percent or more of the ownership assets in the company.
  • Management and control: Women owners must have independent and autonomous control of short-term and long-term business decisions.
  • Contribution of capital and expertise: Women owners must demonstrate a contribution of capital and/or expertise that corresponds to her ownership in the company.
  • Independence: Women owners must operate independently from males or male owned enterprises.

To learn more, click here.

WBE Canada Certification

Resource database

Resource Sidebar

ATTRIBUTES
  • Supply Chain

SOURCE
  • Women Business Enterprises (WEB) Canada

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • CCertification

TARGET AREA
  • Standards and Certifications

TARGET UNIT
  • Procurement

LINK TO RESOURCE

WBE Canada Certification

Women Business Enterprises (WEB) Canada
The Women’s Business Enterprise Canada Council (WBE Canada) has developed the WBE Certification, a formal verification for Canadian B2B businesses that are owned, managed, and controlled by women. Applicants must own, manage, and control at least 51 percent of their business.The WBE certification also connects them to corporate and supply chains. Corporations that join WBE as corporate members will be able to expand their sourcing options by gaining access to the WBE Canada online database of women suppliers certified.

To learn more, click here.

CGLCC Supplier Diversity Program

Resource database

Resource Sidebar

ATTRIBUTES
  • Intersectionality
  • Supply Chain

SOURCE
  • Canadian LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce (CGLCC)

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • PProgram

TARGET AREA
  • Standards and Certifications

TARGET UNIT
  • Procurement

LINK TO RESOURCE

CGLCC Supplier Diversity Program

Canadian LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce (CGLCC)
The Canadian LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce’s (CGLCC) Supplier Diversity Program connects LGBT+ businesses in Canada with corporations, organizations, and government bodies eager to do business with them. CGLCC certifies LGBT+-owned businesses as diverse suppliers and helps them leverage that certification to grow their business, and it works with corporations, organizations, and government bodies to help them understand the LGBT+ market and connect with the CGLCC’s certified suppliers. CGLCC helps corporate members identify competitive suppliers of goods and services by participating in the Supplier Diversity Program.

To learn more, click here.

CAMSC Supplier Certification

Resource database

Resource Sidebar

ATTRIBUTES
  • Intersectionality
  • Supply Chain

SOURCE
  • Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council (CAMSC)

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • CCertification

TARGET AREA
  • Standards and Certifications

TARGET UNIT
  • Procurement

LINK TO RESOURCE

CAMSC Supplier Certification

Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council (CAMSC)
The Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council (CAMSC) certifies and links Aboriginal and minority-owned businesses to purchasing opportunities at major corporations across Canada and the United States. CAMSC Supplier Certification is a market access tool that provides suppliers with a direct access point to major corporations, which value the business benefits of an inclusive and diverse supply chain.

To learn more, click here.

Gender Equality in Social Auditing Guidance

Resource database

Resource Sidebar

ATTRIBUTES
  • Supply Chain

SOURCE
  • Business for Social Responsibility

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • GGuide

TARGET AREA
  • Implementation

TARGET UNIT
  • Diversity & Inclusion, Legal, Procurement

LINK TO RESOURCE

Gender Equality in Social Auditing Guidance

Business for Social Responsibility
This report provides guidance on how organizations can integrate gender equality considerations within social auditing methodologies and processes. It identifies several systemic barriers that prevent current social audits from being gender-sensitive and provides a variety of recommendations to overcome these barriers. It provides organizations with information, recommendations, and case studies on how gender equality can be integrated within current auditing practices, including existing auditing verification measures across the supply chain, and includes a series of worker interviews.

The report highlights five reasons why addressing gender equality issues in global supply chains makes business sense:

  1. Helps to meet business targets
  2. Maintains a strong and stable workforce
  3. Increases productivity and cost saving
  4. Ensures compliance
  5. Encourages worker engagement

To learn more, click here.

Making Women Workers Count: A Framework for Conducting Gender Responsive Due Diligence in Supply Chains

Resource database

Resource Sidebar

ATTRIBUTES
  • Supply Chain

SOURCE
  • Business for Social Responsibility

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • FFramework

TARGET AREA
  • Implementation

TARGET UNIT
  • Diversity & Inclusion, Legal, Procurement

LINK TO RESOURCE

Making Women Workers Count: A Framework for Conducting Gender Responsive Due Diligence in Supply Chains

Business for Social Responsibility
This resource provides guidance on conducting gender-responsive due diligence within supply chains to organizations and suppliers through the Gender Data and Impact (GDI) Framework. The source describes how to make the case for supplier diversity, conduct and analyze gender-responsive assessments, track progress and improve accountability, and communicate progress.

These actions are contained in four phases, which all have a corresponding checklist:

Phase 1: Assess and Analyze

  • Review brand business practices
  • Understand country context and risks
  • Assess supplier workforce performance, profile, and impact data
  • Collect GDI indicators
  • Analyze GDI tool findings

Phase 2: Integrate and Act

  • For brands: act, enable, and influence
  • For suppliers: prioritize issues, define measures and targets, and implement within the business

Phase 3: Track

  • Differentiate between intervention and specific indicators and business as usual indicators and their tracking frequency
  • Use supplier visits to review and discuss ongoing progress towards a specific outcome or to monitor overall gender equality performance
  • Ensure that data collection and tracking become business as usual practices
  • Involve workers and experts in reviewing progress made

Phase 4: Communicate

  • Use gender data within your business
  • Align communication about the GDI with the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to communicate with stakeholders
  • Use the GDI to cover investors’ expectations
  • Encourage suppliers to use GDI findings with their core practitioners’ team and worker committees/unions to foster social dialogue

For more detail, click here.

Gender Equality in Codes of Conduct Guidance

Resource database

Resource Sidebar

ATTRIBUTES
  • Supply Chain

SOURCE
  • Business for Social Responsibility

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • GGuide

TARGET AREA
  • Development

TARGET UNIT
  • Diversity & Inclusion, Legal, Procurement

LINK TO RESOURCE

Gender Equality in Codes of Conduct Guidance

Business for Social Responsibility
This guide provides a framework for companies to integrate gender equality considerations into the standards they use to set supply chain ethical requirements. This guidance addresses nine Code of Conduct Principles and each principle looks into traditional code language, the principle through a women’s lens, case study examples, recommendations for gender-sensitive language revisions, and leadership actions related to the principle:

  1. Discrimination: It is recommended that language be included to specify that the principle of non-discrimination applies to both women and men and that roles and needs specific to women.
  2. Wages and Benefits: Include language about equal remuneration for men and women for work of equal value, etc.
  3. Working Hours: Working hours should be fixed according to national and international limits, and delivery targets should not be set unrealistically and as a way to avoid overtime pay.
  4. Harassment and Abuse: Define harassment and related policies, detail training sessions, and explicitly mention sexual harassment.
  5. Health and Safety: Focus on worker wellbeing and make provisions to guarantee workers access to health services and insurance that serve the distinctive concerns and needs of both women and men.
  6. Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining: Include language that stresses the rights of both women and men to freedom of association and collective bargaining.
  7. Employment Relationship: Extend the application of the code of conduct principles to contracting, subcontracting, homeworking, and recruitment agencies. Considering women often have the most precarious or vulnerable employment status, include specific provisions to protect them.
  8. Management Systems: Code of conduct, policies, procedures, training, and record-keeping should be designed to operationalize the specific gender considerations integrated.

To learn more, click here.

Supporting and Growing Women-Owned Businesses

Resource database

Resource Sidebar

ATTRIBUTES
  • Supply Chain

SOURCE
  • Canada-United States Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders

TYPE OF RESOURCE
  • RReport

TARGET AREA
  • Strategy

TARGET UNIT
  • Community Outreach, Procurement

LINK TO RESOURCE

Supporting and Growing Women-Owned Businesses

Canada-United States Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders
In this research, the Canada-United States Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders has outlined specific initiatives to support women entrepreneurs.

Expanding the use of private sector supplier-diversity programs and increase outreach to women-owned businesses. “Best practices” capturing the full benefit of supplier diversity include:

  • Having a dedicated team focused on meeting specific supplier diversity targets.
  • Maintaining a central database of procurement needs and registered suppliers.
  • Prioritizing outreach efforts such as attending conferences and summits and working closely with networks, accelerators, and incubators in your sector.
  • Implementing a supplier diversity policy and a reporting mechanism.
  • Partnering with catalyzing organizations like WEConnect International, Women Business Enterprises Canada, National Women Business Owners Corporation (NWBOC) or Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC)to connect with women-owned businesses.

Challenge accelerators and professional networks to attract and develop women-owned businesses. “Best practices” that stand out in attracting and developing women entrepreneurs:

  • Tracking and transparency: MaRS Discovery District reached a 30 percent participation of female founders under the guidance of a female CEO.
  • Women-focused programming: Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneurial Winning Women program helped participants reach an average annual growth of 20 percent in revenue.
  • Co-ed networking: Entrepreneurs’ Organization provides all participants (male and female) with access to a network of entrepreneurs.
  • De-bias investment decisions: The Business Development unit in Bank of Canada conducted an independent accessibility review of all steps in a female entrepreneur’s journey.
  • Role modelling and public commitment: YPO Canada joined the #GoSponsorHer Challenge to encourage members to reach out to women entrepreneurs.

To learn more, click here.