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Modern Slavery Statement

SAGE Publishing

Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement for the financial year ending 31st December 2018

 

This statement is a response to Section 54, Part 6 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and sets out the steps SAGE Publishing is taking to ensure that slavery is not taking place in our supply chains or in any part of our business.

Our commitment

SAGE is committed to maintaining and developing our processes to tackle slavery and human trafficking violations related to our own operations, our supply chain, and our products. We have zero tolerance towards slavery and require our supply chain to comply with our values.

About us, our operations and supply chain

SAGE is one of the world's leading independent academic and professional publishers. We publish more than 1,000 journals, more than 800 books a year, reference works and electronic products covering business, humanities, social sciences, science, technology and medicine.

Most of our suppliers are based in the UK, the US and India. The bulk of our supply chain consists of:

  • Print services
  • Web services
  • Couriers
  • Financial intermediation

This statement covers SAGE UK, India and USA.

SAGE's slavery and human trafficking risks

Due to the majority of our supply chain being based in the UK, US and in lower risk sectors such as web based services our exposure to risk is low. Our greatest potential exposures to the risk of modern slavery are in the part of our supply chain which deals with print media, in particular when it comes to the handling of paper-based materials; and in operations we undertake in the higher risk country of India. Our key areas of focus are:

Direct risk: print and information technology suppliers based in India, a country with a high level of modern slavery risk

Indirect risk: paper mills, ink manufacturers and the sourcing of timber

Our policies and contractual controls

We have the following policies to set the direction and manage modern slavery in our supplier base:

  • Supplier code of conduct – our code of conduct outlines the minimum requirements in relation to modern slavery and wider decent work practices
  • Supplier agreement terms and conditions - our standard terms and conditions include modern slavery clauses and decent work provisions which our suppliers are expected to adopt

Due diligence approach

To manage the risk of modern slavery in our supply chain we carry out the following steps:

  • All of our existing suppliers have been notified of our code of conduct and current terms and conditions
  • We are introducing modern slavery weighted questions in our tenders, to ensure that any new suppliers we onboard have their own modern slavery controls in place
  • In cases where we do not use tenders to appoint new suppliers, we have introduced new supplier checklists which our managers use when reviewing new suppliers
  • All our print suppliers and any handling paper based products are required to complete Sage’s modern slavery questionnaire, which are assessed by our procurement teams to ensure minimum requirements are met
  • For SAGE India where the risks of modern slavery are greater suppliers are required to sign up to our code of conduct and they too are required to complete Sage’s modern slavery questionnaire
  • SAGE India carries out site visits with all of its key suppliers
  • In addition, we have developed an approach to develop and manage corrective action plans if any issues should arise

Effectiveness

To assess the effectiveness of our approach we review our processes and the results from our checks on an annual basis.

Training and capacity building

Key members of the organisation who oversee sourcing and manage our supply chain have received training from an external consultant specialising in this area. This training covers an introduction to modern slavery in the publishing industry, upskilling them on our approach and policies as well as how to carry out a supplier risk screening.

Looking ahead

Our focus this year is to continue to ensure that our checks are working effectively and have been embedded into our current practices. We are looking to broaden the number of managers who have been trained to further embed procedures within the business. We will review our approach towards the end of our financial year to understand whether our procedures can be further refined or improved.

Approval

This Modern Slavery Statement was approved by the SAGE Publishing UK Senior Management Group on 28th March 2019.

Richard Fidczuk, Global Journals Production Director, SAGE Publishing UK

28th March 2019