Supply Chain Briefs

Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is the region with perhaps the most severe shortage of labor in the world. Many companies with operations in this region are running into hiring difficulties and labor costs are rapidly rising. While a problem for companies, workers are benefiting and taking home large real wage gains.

Despite not understanding how Silicon Valley works, hundreds of corporations have started Silicon Valley innovation labs because they know that digitization is rapidly changing everything, and their corporate cultures are too siloed, insular, slow to accept, slow to use, and slow to commercialize the innovation they desperately need to survive.

Findings from a global study of corporate sustainability reporting reveals that companies in Japan have the highest overall sustainability disclosure rate. The findings raise the fundamental question of why companies report and whether reporting regulations are incentivizing compliance over substance.

The unemployment rate may be overestimating current labor market tightness. An exercise on monthly employment changes shows that 63 percent of all newly employed people aged 25 to 54 in October 2018 were not actively looking for a job in the previous month. If employers are looking for slack in the labor market, they should find better ways to source and recruit the people who are not looking for work and allegedly not willing to work.

For companies embarking on the practice of sustainability reporting it can be challenging to discern between the various reporting frameworks and guidelines. To ease this process, The Conference Board developed a table comparing some of the leading sustainability reporting frameworks.

For most businesses in China, including foreign firms, directly addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is unchartered territory. Many companies are still in the early stages of their sustainability journey in China, and existing programs often lack strategic intent or deep commitment. We see a tremendous opportunity for foreign firms to exploit areas of Chinese policy and SDG alignment to raise the impact and relevance of their sustainability programs in China.

The Conference Board has developed a sustainable procurement framework to help companies assess their sustainable procurement program’s orientation toward outcomes and impact.

Embedding sustainability into the supply chain makes good business sense. Embracing sustainable procurement practices can help companies manage business risks, achieve costs savings through material efficiency gains, enhance their brand reputation, and manage suppliers more effectively. But success requires a focus on real-world impact rather than inputs and activities.

The cyber risk landscape is quickly evolving, but organizations are slow to catch up with the new threat landscape. Organizations are still organized to focus primarily on more traditional cyber risk management, are not updating their processes and policies or investing in tools and technologies to comprehensively address the latest and fastest-growing threats coming from digital and social media. Senior leadership and boards need to better understand the evolving cyber risk landscape.