Professor Linda Hendry explains how work on sustainability training has helped shape the policies and behaviours of a global fashion retailer.
Professor Linda Hendry heads up the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business’s Modern Slavery, Justice and Complex Supply Chains knowledge and action hub – bringing together expertise from across Lancaster University that encompasses a huge range of issues around modern slavery.
Professor Hendry, along with colleagues Dr Meng Jia – now at the University of Leicester – and Professor Mark Stevenson, worked with multinational fashion retailer Primark to look at supplier sustainability training – especially around the concept of training the trainers.
How did the work with Primark come about?
When Meng started as a PhD researcher, she particularly wanted to look at sustainable supplier development in China. Our LUMS colleague Dr Lingxuan Liu was able to make the links for her with some organisations in China, and that was a gateway to Primark.
Meng spent extensive periods in China. She got herself really embedded in the organisation. She was able to some extent to shadow the sustainable supplier training, learning about what was working and what was not, helping them to develop their operations.
When Meng came back to the UK, she was introduced to the head office in London, and that is when Mark and I became more directly involved.
How did the work progress?
What I am most passionate about is extending sustainability knowledge across a deep and complicated supply chain. It is only by methods like ‘training the trainer’ that you can scale up what you are doing.
After the success of our work with their China office, Primark wanted to share the work more broadly through delivering webinars on environmental and social sustainability issues linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The first involved around 20 global supplier delegates from China, Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Turkey, Germany, and the UK. This kickstarted a new research project to scale up Primark’s global supplier sustainability-related training using the training the trainer approach.
We were then invited to do a webinar bringing in external consultants commissioned by Primark. This was for the Primark Global Team on Training of Trainers, explaining how to make this scaling up a reality, helping them to understand how knowledge is transferred from one tier of the supply chain to another. You can see how well it worked from the feedback we received from a Primark manager: “The impressive turnout […] across our global team is testament to how relevant this issue is across our extensive ethical trade and environmental sustainability programme. You are all such experts in your field, and it shone through.”
Have there been further results?
Primark were pleased with these webinars and they wanted to bring in their partners. I was delighted to find myself at a webinar with the likes of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). More than 50 external partners attended representing NGO organisations, including Better Work Vietnam, and Better Factories Cambodia.
Our work is also cited in the Primark Sustainability and Ethics Progress report 2022/23. The report states: “The Primark team on the ground in China is working closely with the researcher (Dr Jia) to act upon her recommendations. […] The researcher is also providing ongoing feedback on the design and application of the project.”
