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What you need to know about the Modern Slavery Act

Product managers have an emerging and essential strategic role in meeting modern slavery obligations. In this blog, we unpack what is modern slavery and what product managers should look out for to take an assertive role in addressing and mitigating modern slavery risks in their product lifecycle.

Modern slavery remains a global issue, with approximately 40 million victims living in modern slavery at any given moment. The definition of modern slavery ultimately encompasses human trafficking, forced or bonded labour, child labour, servitude and deceptive recruitment in exchange for labour.

COVID-19 is making it harder for companies to comply with new rules on modern slavery with some supply chain checks going "out the window" as companies scramble to survive the pandemic.

Australian companies with annual revenues of more than $100 million need to prepare statements on how they are identifying and tackling the risks of modern slavery - which includes child labour and human trafficking - by March 2021 (if their reporting year ends in June) to comply with the Commonwealth's Modern Slavery Act 2018. The statements must explain how companies are assessing and addressing modern slavery risks in their global operations and supply chains, and will be made public online. - Jenny Wiggins, AFR

Modern Slavery & Product Governance:

Product teams adopting digital product governance can now be committed to monitoring regulatory obligations in their businesses in addition to focussing on performance and growth.

To meet your obligations under the Modern Slavery legislative regimes product managers can incorporate modern slavery into their product monitoring and compliance practices by reviewing your supply chains, assessing risk and establishing a virtual team across your business.

This continuous monitoring will support a commitment to all that you can reasonably do to prevent all forms of modern slavery in your product lifecycle. If you want to lead in this product governance space, monitor your product weekly, monthly and quarterly. Set slavery specific metrics and action plans in your product reviews.

How companies benefit in relation to complying with current requirements for modern slavery monitoring.

• Reports that can support compulsory and voluntary Modern Slavery Statements produced by companies (in the form of statistics, actions taken and future planning frameworks)
• Team platform to track actions in reaching compliance (for executive management to report to the board and working committees to communicate amongst one another effectively when allocating/completing tasks).
• Register of all actions taken in becoming compliant
• Consolidated record of all suppliers and risk categories
• Report and evidence production for external and internal auditing purposes
• Completely customisable to suit the size and requirements of the company

For more about Modern Slavery, visit our Skyjed Webinar here

For more insights to help you understand how product managers can include modern slavery into digital product governance, follow our Skyjed blog. Skyjed’s digital product governance tool comes with modern slavery monitoring already built in. The platform provides the essential monitoring, reporting and analytics capability to continuously monitor a product portfolio end-to-end. With trigger-based alerts and notifications, business teams can ensure fast and smart product decisions.