Responsible Sourcing

Overview

RILA’s Responsible Sourcing Committee is composed of leading retail executives working on responsible and ethical sourcing and social compliance. Responsible Sourcing executives address issues that affect the ethical performance of their supply chains, with a specific focus on manufacturing and relationships with suppliers to ensure compliance and drive continuous improvement in existing and emerging sourcing regions. They also manage responses to stakeholder requests for information on responsible sourcing performance. 

The retail industry leverages approaches such as audits, worker engagement, training, and remediation to improve human rights performance, product and manufacturer transparency and traceability, supplier ownership, streamline supplier information requests, NGO collaboration, and more.  

The Responsible Sourcing Committee provides leading retailers a forum for executives to benchmark and hear from experts regularly on rotating topics related to the implementation, management, and oversight of retail responsible sourcing programs. The committee has two annual in-person meetings (one co-located with the ELEVATE Leadership Forum), benchmarking surveys, and bi-monthly, focused benchmarking calls on members’ highest priority issues.  

RILA members have full access to past meeting and call content, reports and benchmarking results which can be found below.  

For more information on RILA's Responsible Sourcing Committee, contact Erin Hiatt, senior director, sustainability and innovation at erin.hiatt@rila.org. 

Updates/News 

• Miss our May meeting? On May 2 & 3, the Responsible Sourcing met in Jersey City, NJ. We had 21 attendees representing 13 leading retail companies. Program members can access the meeting summary below. Reach out to learn what we discussed and how you can get involved in our next in-person meeting in late July.