Statement on Modern Slavery
Introduction
BISSELL International Trading Company, B.V. and BISSELL Canada Corporation and its related parent companies, divisions, and subsidiaries, (collectively “BISSELL”) support the goals of the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act and are committed to the highest standards for delivering products that inspire our customers and consumers. This includes our commitment to the legal, ethical, and humanitarian principles of our founders, Melville and Anna Bissell, who understood that a company and its products are only as good as the people who make them. We are proud of the steps we have taken to combat modern slavery.
BISSELL is a member of SEDEX (Supplier Ethical Data Exchange), a not-for-profit membership organization dedicated to driving improvements in responsible and ethical business practices in global supply chains. SEDEX is currently being used by a number of leading retailers and brand manufacturers, and over 15,000 sites are registered on SEDEX. More information can be found at www.sedexglobal.com.
Our Business
We are a manufacturer of innovative floor care products such as vacuum cleaners, carpet sweepers, carpet washers, and bare floor vacuums, as well as cleaning chemicals and air care products. BISSELL International Trading Company, B.V. and BISSELL Canada Corporation are subsidiaries of BISSELL Inc., a Michigan, USA corporation. We also have affiliate companies in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Hong Kong, P. R. China, Qatar, Malaysia, South Africa, Vietnam, and the United Arab Emirates. Both BISSELL International Trading Company, B.V. and BISSELL Australia PTY Ltd. are registered to do business in Australia.
BISSELL Inc. has its head office in Michigan, USA. Collectively, BISSELL has over 1200 employees worldwide and operates in over 50 countries.
As both BISSELL International Trading Company, B.V. and BISSELL Canada Corporation share the same supply chain, representatives of BISSELL Inc. and its affiliates and subsidiaries have prepared this statement on behalf of both entities.
Our Supply Chains
Our supply chains include both the procurement and the manufacture of goods in North America and Asia. We manufacture products including vacuum cleaners, carpet washers, steam and hard floor cleaners, and air purifiers in Cambodia, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, and Indonesia. We also manufacture formulas for cleaning in the United States and China. The goods are shipped, warehoused, and sold into markets around the world through retailers and distributors and direct to consumers.
Our Policies on Slavery
We are committed to taking steps towards ensuring that there is no modern slavery in our supply chains or in any part of our business. Our Supplier Code of Conduct reflects our commitment to acting ethically and with integrity in all our business relationships and to implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to reduce the risk that slavery is taking place anywhere in our supply chains.
BISSELL aims to only partner with substantial, well-established, and professional businesses in the supply of its products, and all such suppliers must commit to a Supplier Code of Conduct and renew that commitment each year. Pursuant to the Supplier Code of Conduct, Suppliers must operate within all legal requirements in each country where products or parts are made for BISSELL. BISSELL recognizes there are different legal environments in which our Suppliers operate, and we expect our Suppliers to follow the laws of their own countries, but we are committed to promoting a minimum standard of humanitarian and environmental awareness that may exceed local laws. Through its Supplier Code of Conduct, Suppliers agree not to use child labor or forced labor and to treat their employees with respect and dignity. Each BISSELL Supplier also agrees:
“Forced, bonded (including debt bondage) or indentured labor, involuntary prison labor, slavery or trafficking of persons shall not to be used or facilitated. This includes transporting, harboring, recruiting, transferring or receiving vulnerable persons by means of threat, force, coercion, abduction or fraud for the purpose of exploitation.”
When a Supplier enters a commercial agreement with BISSELL this includes agreeing to comply with our Supplier Code of Conduct. Suppliers must agree to operate with certain employment conditions. These conditions include, but are not limited to: Suppliers must compensate their employees by paying all legal wages and benefits; Suppliers must maintain legal work hours; Suppliers must not use child labor; All work must be voluntary and workers shall be free to leave work at any time or terminate their employment, and; Suppliers are required to provide a safe and healthy working environment.
Each Supplier is responsible for ensuring the compliance of its own suppliers. BISSELL also has a third-party company conduct audits based on SEDEX standards at our main suppliers to help ensure compliance to these standards.
Due Diligence Process for Slavery
Our supply chain carries risk areas that must be monitored. In particular, potential risk areas exist in the labor used in our Asian portion of our supply chain as well as materials used within our products, such as the potential for use of conflict minerals and other materials of suspect origin. We have systems in place to help assess and monitor potential risk areas and to help mitigate the risk of slavery occurring in our supply chains.
As part of this system, BISSELL conducts audits of its finished goods suppliers based on compliance with SEDEX standards requirements. BISSELL reserves the right to verify Supplier compliance with the Supplier Code of Conduct through unannounced on-site assessments and to commission audits of our Suppliers by a qualified independent third party. Each finished good supplier is audited regularly by our internal quality team. While BISSELL has only seven primary suppliers of finished goods, we have many minor suppliers and, consequently, we perform or commission over 50 audits annually.
When our audits turn up any actions or conditions not in compliance with our manufacturing requirements or our Supplier Code of Conduct, we follow up with a corrective action list and monitor the Supplier’s response. Depending on the severity of the out-of-compliance condition and the Supplier’s demonstrated commitment to a comprehensive and appropriate response, we reserve the right to take additional corrective measures, up to and including the immediate termination of purchase orders and/or purchase agreements.
Supplier Adherence to our Values
To ensure all those in our supply chain and contractors comply with our values, we have in place a supply chain certification process.
BISSELL Suppliers certify their compliance with the Supplier Code of Conduct every year, through the annual signature of a high-ranking officer on the Supplier Code of Conduct document. Failure by a Supplier to comply with its local laws or the Supplier Code of Conduct will result in corrective measures, up to and including the termination of BISSELL’s business arrangement if the Supplier demonstrates any reluctance in promptly correcting any out-of-compliance condition.
We also require in our Supplier Code of Conduct that Suppliers and/or its workers or subcontractors notify BISSELL within twenty-four hours if they suspect, observe, or learn of any conduct within their own company or any part of its supply chain that is potentially in violation of the Supplier Code of Conduct or that could otherwise be viewed in any way as unethical, dishonest, destructive, or illegal. There is also enhanced protection for ethics violation reporters within the Supplier Code of Conduct.
Monitoring and enforcement of compliance is a cross-functional effort at BISSELL and consists of involvement from the following departments: Legal, Product Safety and Compliance, Global Quality and Sustainability, Procurement and Human Resources.
Training
Since BISSELL was founded by Melville and Anna Bissell in 1876, our business practices have been governed by integrity, honesty, fair dealing, and full compliance with all applicable laws. BISSELL owes its longevity to these principles. BISSELL Associates worldwide must annually sign off on a Global Code of Business Conduct, which reminds and re-commits our entire workforce regarding the importance of this promise. Every BISSELL associate is directed to report any instance of unethical or illegal behavior by BISSELL or by any of its business partners, including its Suppliers, as part of their commitment to the BISSELL Global Code of Business Conduct, and associates who are aware of such activity and fail to report them are themselves subject to discipline.
BISSELL reviews Employee Handbooks with a list of local policies regarding our policies on ethics. BISSELL Associates are required to acknowledge their adherence to these policies upon hire and when policy updates occur. These policies are provided to all our global Associates through our e-learning system.
BISSELL Associates with the responsibility for auditing its Suppliers are trained for these duties through an extensive mentoring process, by which they are required to attend numerous audits in the company of their experienced supervisors, assisting in the required documentation against the appropriate checklists. These Associates attend all third-party audits (SEDEX) and are required to update our internal audit standards as developments in “best practices” are identified.
Our Effectiveness in Combating Slavery
We anticipate the manufacture of our products in Cambodia, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, and Indonesia are susceptible to risks of modern slavery.
We assess that risk using a pre-certification process including an internal evaluation by the supplier and an audit of the business to confirm the evaluation’s accuracy by our purchasing group.
We use the following audit findings to measure how effective we have been to ensure that slavery is not taking place in any part of our business or supply chains: C-TPAT, SEDEX, and internal audits.
BISSELL adheres to C-TPAT standards for loading all containers of BISSELL goods for international shipping. These standards include a requirement for inspection of each container to ensure there are no hidden compartments prior to loading, with pictures taken of each empty container. Pictures are also taken during and after each loading process, again reducing risk of human trafficking activity that can be associated with our product movement. Containers are then sealed with tamper-proof serialized sealing requirements to prevent anyone from changing their contents during shipment. A comprehensive checklist is completed and signed confirming compliance with this process for every BISSELL container.
BISSELL has third-party auditors conduct audits at all major Tier I and Tier II suppliers using SEDEX’s SMETA 4-Pillar audit standards. This audit is designed to help auditors conduct high quality audits that encompass all aspects of responsible business practice, covering SEDEX's four pillars of Labor, Health and Safety, Environment and Business Ethics (including slavery).
Internal BISSELL audits are conducted multiple times each year to ensure the practices and standards are being maintained. In addition, BISSELL has a daily presence at all major suppliers’ facilities to ensure all standards are being controlled and followed.
All audit findings for all three audit standards require corrective actions and a follow-up process to confirm and close out the finding.
We manage the risks to our organization by maintaining consistent and high standards of due diligence and risk mitigation processes to monitor for and avoid modern slavery in all environments in which we operate, regardless of whether the environment or the suppliers with whom we work are more or less vulnerable to modern slavery.
In 2021, BISSELL launched an online and telephone reporting system to report ethics concerns. This system is available to suppliers, Associates, and customers and allows the business and human resource partners to align on reported ethics concerns globally.
In 2022, we identified some key training for all BISSELL Associates regarding the risks of modern slavery in general.
In 2023, we made available to all BISSELL Associates a report of our responsibilities and duties under the Modern Slavery Act accompanied by a voluntary training opportunity around the risks of modern slavery in supply chains. We also created a process for suppliers to identify any potential use of conflict materials in their supply chain.
Further Steps
In reviewing our supply chain to draft this statement, including our work in previous years and the status of our internal awareness of modern slavery, we intend to take the following further preventative steps to reduce the risk of slavery in our supply chain:
- Continue to evaluate and resolve reported ethics concerns through our ethics reporting system
- Continue to make BISSELL Associates aware of our responsibilities in combatting modern slavery in our supply chains
- Require mandatory supply chain risk management training to relevant Associates who work directly in supply chain
- Continue to implement the identification process of the risk of conflict minerals with suppliers
This modern slavery statement is made by BISSELL International Trading Company, B.V. and BISSELL Canada Corporation for the financial year ending in December 2023.
This statement was approved by Directors for the named organizations in the paragraph above on May 13, 2024.