Yodel Delivery Network Limited is unquestionably committed to preventing slavery and human trafficking in its corporate activities, and to ensuring that its supply chains are free from slavery and human trafficking.
Structure of the business
Structure of the business
Yodel Delivery Network Limited is an independent parcel carrier operating within the UK. We operate a network of over 50 sites nationwide. The majority of our parcels are received at one of our 3 national sortation centres where they are sorted and dispatched to one of 47 local service centres nationwide, and then loaded for delivery to the final recipient.
Our workforce consists of a combination of employed, self-employed and agency workers depending on local labour conditions and demands of the business.
Continuous Improvement
Yodel are committed to setting a high standard to protect our colleagues and we were the first parcel carrier to have become a member of the Slave Free Alliance.
Our cross functional working party continue to meet on a regular basis. Through this working party we have built a strong partnership with Slave Free Alliance. We continue to use the plan which was based upon the recommendations made through our collaboration with Slave Free Alliance as a framework for our Modern Slavery strategy.
The following sections demonstrate the progress we have made against the below main objectives we committed to in our previous statement.
1. To provide companywide awareness and education campaigns to all the colleagues that are employed or engaged as a service partner with Yodel.
2. Continue to develop our supply chain management processes and resources to identify, monitor and work collaboratively with our suppliers and service partners to reduce risk levels in relation to modern slavery.
3. Further improvements to our Vetting & Screening Processes.
4. Full awareness and training programme for people managers and all new and existing colleagues designed in collaboration with Slave Free Alliance.
5. Continue to refine our supplier audits to monitor risk levels in relation to modern slavery.
6. Through our collaboration with Slave Free Alliance, we will design a bespoke escalation process involving initial response, victim support and advocacy.
Policies
As part of our constant commitment to combating slavery and human trafficking, since our last published statement we have reviewed, updated, and recommunicated the following policies:
Diversity & Inclusion Policy
As an equal opportunities employer, we are committed to creating and ensuring a non-discriminatory and respectful working environment for our staff. We want all our staff to feel confident that they can report wrongdoing without any risk to themselves. With this in mind, we have reviewed an updated our Diversity & Inclusion Policy to create a clearer understanding of standards of respectful behaviours and the channels in which colleagues can report concerns.
Procurement Policies
We appointed a Director of Procurement who brought a wealth of experience, and we had several newly modernised policies implemented: Procurement Policy, Sustainable Supply Chain Policy, and our Supplier Code of Ethics reiterates our expectations setting exacting standards for all our suppliers and service partners we engage with in terms of modern slavery. Those policies have been examined against universal recognised standards as part of their annual review process and updated accordingly.
Due diligence and processes
Further to creation of the Escalations Toolkit for Managers, we have had the opportunity to assess the effectiveness of this with a potential incident, fortunately following a thorough investigation there was no concerns in relation to modern slavery, but this enabled us to evaluate and validate the Escalations Toolkit in a live situation.
Risk and compliance
Vetting and Screening Processes
We continue to partner with an organisation that provides services to self-employed individuals and professional services companies to develop their online platform. This will increase our capability to allow further levels of document validation and compliance prior to engaging with our couriers and service delivery partners. Allowing any inaccuracies and potential concerns to be highlighted quickly. We hope to be in a position to introduce the new processes and online onboarding platform by the end of 2023.
We continue to work in partnership with our Vetting & Screening provider to improve our processes which has enabled us to reduce the time taken to complete our vetting and screening checks. Outside of our main peak Christmas period all checks are now completed within an average of 3 days which is a further reduction of 3 days. This gives us greater visibility and control over our recruitment decisions, being able to identify any potential risks in a timely manner.
Supply Chain Management
To complement the ongoing work to strengthen our Procurement policies, we continue to leverage our partnership with Slave Free Alliance, to support us with required legislative changes and industry standard updates to ensure we continue to evolve our supply chain management practices and processes to monitor and work collaboratively with our suppliers and service partners to reduce risk levels in relation to modern slavery.
Key performance indicators
Yodel Delivery Network Limited regularly evaluates the risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring in its supply chain through targeted risk management activities and standard procedures that alert our management teams to potential areas of concern that could signal exploitation, specifically:
· Quarterly colleague data audits for multiple bank accounts and multi-occupancy addresses
· Reporting alerts to identify increased or excessive hours, increased parcel volume and increased revenue for all our self-employed colleagues, both directly engaged and engaged through a service provider.
To date and through our due diligence processes we identified a small number of cases associated with data points as referred to above that required further investigation by our Security Team, however they were satisfied that there were no concerns in relation to exploitation.
Any incidents relating to modern slavery are reported promptly using our Operational Risk Management Reporting system, Sphera.
Training, Education & Awareness
We continue to regularly run internal and external awareness campaigns through our social media channels. We have a dedicated page on our Intranet for colleagues to access resources and updates relating to modern slavery.
We are excited to continue working in collaboration with Slave Free Alliance to design and deliver a bespoke training package that will include diverse formats of content and resources. This will enable us to:
1. train our managers and existing colleagues in spotting the signs, what appropriate actions to take and what resources are available to them.
2. include this activity in our onboarding process for all new colleagues including those that are self-employed.
3. provide specific training for our drivers to be alert to the signals of exploitation in the communities they work in
Further actions and sign off
We will continue to work with our suppliers, clients, partners and Slave Free Alliance, the wider membership network, and Hope for Justice to continually embed our modern slavery framework into our business model and supply chain. Please refer to the sections above to learn about all the activities we have planned to continue to support our agenda to prevent and tackle slavery and human trafficking.
This statement relates to the financial year 1st January 2023 to 31st December 2023 and was approved by the Board of Directors of Yodel Delivery Network Limited. This statement will be reviewed and updated annually.
