Modern Slavery Supply Chain Training

Modern slavery supply chain training is training aimed at the people who choose, price and manage suppliers, rather than at the workers who are at risk. Those workers sit inside another company, often offshore and several tiers down, and an Australian business cannot reach them directly. It can reach its own buyers.

That distinction is what most programmes miss. Rolling awareness training across the whole workforce lifts general understanding and does little for supply chain risk, because the procurement officer approving a contract price and the contract manager renewing it are usually the two people never taught what a suspicious price or a sudden change of subcontractor looks like.

The worst forms of child labour make the point. It is one of the practices captured by the Modern Slavery Act 2018, and for most Australian businesses it is a supply chain exposure rather than a workplace one. Nobody on your own site will see it. Whether it is noticed at all depends on the questions your buyers ask and on whether your suppliers’ managers have been trained to answer them.

Programmes that hold up tend to cover the practices themselves through a modern slavery course, a clear escalation route for anyone who does notice something, child safety training for managers where young workers are in scope, and material written for suppliers rather than staff, which is where building your own courses and running supplier briefings come in.

Peer learning carries a lot of this in Australia. The UN Global Compact Network Australia runs a Modern Slavery Community of Practice across optimising, implementing and SME streams, meeting under the Chatham House Rule so members can be candid about what has and has not worked. Its publications include a risk management playbook written for Australian SMEs and guidance on grievance mechanisms, which matters because training that surfaces a concern achieves nothing if there is nowhere for that concern to go.

Expectations differ by sector and change over time, so treat this as general information rather than legal advice. Browse Sentrient’s compliance training courses to see what the underlying content covers.