I have been interested in diversity in supply chains and how it can support business growth and widen the availability of products and services for many years from a consumer perspective.

Personally, I cannot understand how businesses could ignore a new market which has potential to be financially lucrative. For example, in the 1970’s I recall only two companies I knew of that catered for Black women, Fashion Fair and Flori Roberts, and that could be purchased in the UK. Whilst, in 2022 I cannot nip to the high street and purchase tights suitable for my skin tone easily and the cost can be 3 times as much as those my wife, who’s white, buys.

Unfortunately, the UK continues to lag behind the US when it comes to supplying goods and services for diverse communities, and diversity in our supply chains is no different. As far back as late 1960’s the US government, yes you heard me, 1960’s, required government agencies and contractors to work with minority-owned companies with the reporting of these relationships being mandatory.

Supplier diversity has increasingly been seen as a business imperative and an indicator of an organisations’ commitment to equality diversity and inclusion and social value. It now seems UK businesses are starting to consider diversity within their supply chain and are taking steps to address. 

So, what are diverse suppliers?  Diverse suppliers are majority owned companies (51% or more) by those with a protected characteristics such as disability, race, gender or sexual orientation.

To build supplier diversity it has been recognised that diverse businesses may not have the knowledge and experience to be able to navigate a company’s request for proposal (RFP). To address this many organisations have developed and implemented diverse supplier programmes to provide information, training and mentoring to support diverse businesses.

A number of benefits of having a diverse supply chain have been identified such as :-

• Increasing supply chain agility and resilience
• Widening the pool of suppliers
• Providing economic opportunities for disadvantaged communities
• Driving competition
• Boosting market growth
• Enhancing company brand
• Facilitating innovation
• Increasing return on investment

Interestingly, HS2 has taken a different approach to increasing supplier diversity by emphasising the importance of equality, diversity, and inclusion in the awarding of their contracts by not awarding contracts to those who do not meet their diversity criteria. In November 2021 HS2 emphasised their commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and supply chain diversity even further by setting an equality standard across their supply chain and implementing their Marketplace platform.

Designed to support and equip companies of all sizes within their supply chain with the tools needed to embed diversity and inclusion best practice across their business processes. No excuses!

Surely, this will highlight those who are using “smoke and mirrors” techniques to obscure who they really are.

As the great Sam Cooke sang “It’s been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change gon’ come, …”