Engaging Suppliers

We continue to enroll suppliers in our Sustainable Procurement Program (SPP) to help drive social and environmental improvements, set clear targets and improve transparency throughout our supply base.

Supplier sustainability assessment and disclosure: As part of their participation in our SPP, all suppliers complete an assessment by EcoVadis, a recognized provider of business sustainability ratings for global supply chains. In 2019, 750 suppliers underwent an EcoVadis assessment. Among the suppliers we have assessed more than once, we see our program driving supplier improvements across all areas of sustainability, most notably labor standards and environmental performance, increasing scores by 4% and 2.5% respectively. An important part of this program is encouraging our suppliers to publicly disclose their environmental performance—including emissions and water use—to CDP as part of our own CDP Supply Chain commitment. In 2019, 344 Johnson & Johnson suppliers were requested to disclose to CDP, an increase of 13% over 2018. This progress demonstrates the positive influence a large sustainability-minded procurement organization can have across its entire supply chain, influencing the way business impacts social development and environmental stewardship through multiple suppliers around the world.

Highlight

In 2019, Johnson & Johnson was again named to the CDP supplier engagement leader board. We were the first healthcare company to achieve this position in 2018 and the first healthcare company to do so for three years in a row.

Auditing supplier compliance through Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) and Social Audits: We verify and monitor supplier compliance with laws and regulations, and with our Responsibility Standards for Suppliers through formal assessment and audits. Our EH&S audit program, which has been in place since 2006, is conducted using the audit protocol and checklist developed by the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (PSCI). We completed 134 EH&S audits in 2019, the majority of them in Asia. We further standardized our framework for ensuring compliance with our human rights standards by launching a dedicated social audit program. In 2018, we introduced a program of social audits, mostly conducted according to SMETA 4 guidelines and with a focus on human rights. In 2019, our first full year of social audits, 50 audits were completed by accredited external firms. Our procurement teams are progressing plans with relevant suppliers to establish corrective actions and support suppliers with their implementation.