Wells Fargo is committed to doing business in a way that benefits communities, the economy, and the environment. In this regard, it appears that the company’s suppliers share its values and ethical standards. Accordingly, supplier operations must comply with Wells Fargo’s policies. Wells Fargo (n.d.) asserts that each supplier is responsible for ensuring that its employees and representatives fully understand Wells Fargo’s expectations which expound in their supplier code of conduct. This document contains three provisions regarding supplier conduct related to ethical business practices, environmental stewardship, and community investment.
According to Wells Fargo (n.d.), Wells Fargo suppliers must use good faith in their business practices to avoid corruption, deception, extortion, waste, bribery, or other unethical conduct. Respect for human rights and privacy principles are at the heart of Wells Fargo’s supplier relationships with customers. Moreover, the suppliers of this company must contribute to protecting the environment. Wells Fargo also expects its suppliers to pay maximum attention to the needs of their communities.
Compiling the supplier code implies a particular composition of persons involved in this matter. The person involved in developing the code should understand this document’s usefulness, importance, and necessity for the company. At the same time, the employee must hold a leadership position within the company, allowing him or her to own certain organizational powers. Furthermore, employees from different departments and divisions should be involved in creating a document. This is vital; otherwise, a code written by one stakeholder or group of people may be one-sided and not contain important clauses describing the rules and norms of supplier behavior. The committee should understand that the supplier code continues the company code, so it should not contradict the latter.
Special corporate training can be organized to compose the code, during which discussions and brainstorming sessions will be held on the principles of suppliers’ code. For this, heads of departments, leading specialists, and key employees of the organization are invited. For practical work with the training participants, at first, the entire composition of the participants can be divided into several groups, in which brainstorming sessions will be held. Then all groups can be gathered for general discussion and analysis of the received material. Thus, a supplier code can be created by agreeing on all ideas through brainstorming.
Reference
Wells Fargo. (n.d.). Wells Fargo supplier code of conduct. Web.