Sustainability is managed with information
In the current work on sustainability, the emphasis is quite different from what it used to be: instead of pretty phrases, people want facts, and preferably in numerical or at least structured format. The idea for our development of the sustainability analysis process came from our customers’ need to have more information at their disposal.
Hansel has developed a tool for assessing the sustainability of the company’s joint procurement, which has been in use since the end of 2019. All the company’s joint procurement projects undergo the analysis. Based on the analysis, two members of the sustainability group assess whether any sustainability labels are awarded to the joint procurement. In 2022, 16 joint procurements were subject to the responsibility analysis (50 joint procurements in 2021).
The aim of the sustainability analysis process is to assist the category manager and the entire tendering team in extensively considering the different aspects of sustainability in connection with the tendering. The analysis assesses the sustainability of the joint procurement project in relation to predefined sustainability targets. The tendering team must consider how to create a positive impact and what actions are required from Hansel to reduce the negative impact. Representatives of the sustainability team support this work.
Joint procurement promotes sustainability in many ways
Sustainability targets related to the environmental label can include a reduction in greenhouse gases, energy efficiency, a reduction in the use of harmful substances and the circular economy. Social responsibility targets can include compliance with labour law and human rights, employment through procurement, acknowledgement of non-discrimination or accessibility and introducing the Code of Conduct requirements as part of the contract. Financial sustainability goals include ensuring sufficient financial performance, cost-efficiency or the promotion of security of supply.
The customer will be informed of the sustainability level of the joint procurement and the awarded labels from the sustainability tab in the hansel.fi online service, which includes a summary by the category manager of the results of the sustainability analysis. To improve reporting, the sustainability analysis process in its entirety was transferred to Hansel’s ERP system in 2022, and the previously used Excel-based process will be abandoned at the beginning of 2023. The sustainability targets and the related clauses are entered directly into the system, to which the sustainability team also adds its decisions on awarded labels. Furthermore, statistical sustainability-related fields from Hilma were entered into the system so that their correspondence to Hansel’s sustainability analysis is clear. Saving data in a structured format enables better reporting and makes sustainability data more widely available to customers in the future.
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