SLCP has officially become independent and embarked on a strategic plan for 2024-2028.

The Social and Labor Convergence   Program (SLCP) was launched by the Sustainable Clothing Alliance (SAC) in 2015, with the continuous goal of reducing audit fatigue in the clothing industry and improving working conditions. On February 1, 2024, SLCP officially separated from SAC and will become an independent foundation (called Stichting) headquartered in the Netherlands. Stichting SLCP will serve as a PBO (Public Interest Organization) to showcase its non-profit nature and commitment to improving working conditions. The organization will be the legitimate owner of CAF, ensuring the transparency and openness of the tool. Afterwards, SLCP will embark on a new journey of its own. Today, the editor will take you through SLCP's 2024-2028 strategic plan.

This plan was developed in collaboration with many signatories and stakeholders of SLCP, building on the key advantages and achievements of SLCP's first five-year cycle (2019-2023), while making improvements and changes.

The progress and achievements of SLCP

In the strategic cycle from 2019 to 2023, SLCP has shown significant growth and momentum in all areas of work. From 2021 to 2022, the adoption rate of SLCP has increased by 65%, and the evaluated factories are expected to reach 11000 by the end of 2023, with a target of 25000 set. SLCP has been implemented globally, with China accounting for39%.

SLCP has gathered over 250 signatories and implemented the Integration Assessment Framework (CAF) in over 60 countries/regions. The following three new brands have been added to the list of SLCP validation data recipients.

SLCP's past strategic goals revolved around four main themes: industry adoption, resource unlocking, data access and comparability, and organizational resilience. As shown in the figure below, this lays a solid foundation for its next strategic cycle.

Collaboration and Partnership

Since its establishment, SLCP has positioned itself as a catalyst for change, working closely with numerous partners to form an "SLCP ecosystem" by supporting stakeholders inimproving global supply chain working conditions, and striving to achieve a larger shared vision.

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In fact, SLCP found that the adoption rate was lower than expected. This is due to external factors (epidemic, supply chain integration) as well as more factors related to SLCP (such as time, transformation costs, and compatibility with industry standards).

Ensuring more factories pass validation remains the top priority for SLCP's next strategiccycle. In order to elevate the scale and influence of SLCP to a new level, SLCP will make the following improvements:

1. Optimize CAF to achieve (more) global and widespread applicability, including for small and medium-sized enterprises;

2. Improve usability;

3. Ensure greater consistency with international labor standards (ILS) and national labor laws (NLL);

4. Improve data quality and integrity;

5. Data analysis and insights on development impact;

6. Promote change management with users (including compatibility with existing systems);

7. Diversification is achieved through hierarchical and industry expansion.

Global challenges

The world is facing a series of complex challenges, such as global uncertainty and geopolitical conditions, increased trade barriers, social unrest, economic turmoil caused by wars, strengthened regulatory oversight in various regions, such as the EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) or the New York Fashion Act, lack of transparency in data, and distrust of audit systems, all of which are challenges that supply chains must face.

Understanding how and where this complex and constantly changing environment affects SLCP is a key driving force for the new five-year strategy. Therefore, SLCP has incorporated project expansion, driving impact, human rights due diligence (HRDD), data-driven methods, quality and effectiveness, and equal partnerships into future plans. Theoverall goal of SLCP has not changed, and we all hope to see a world where decent working conditions are standard practices in the global supply chain.

strategic target

SLCP has set four strategic goals and corresponding success criteria for the next strategic period and beyond. Including relevant, effective, and scalable tools, reliable and actionable data, accelerating collaborative improvement actions, inclusive organizations, and dynamic ecosystems.

Based on the forecast of 11000 facilities evaluated by the end of 2023, SLCP expects to double this number by the end of 2026, reaching 25000 validated evaluations per year (with a threshold of 90% (23000) of this target). According to the estimate of unlocking $25 million in resources annually by the end of 2023, SLCP's goal is to quadruple this number to $100 million annually by the end of 2026. This will receive increasing support from brands and retailers that accept SLCP data, and promote further integration with MSIs and standard holders.

In the future, SLCP will focus its energy and resources on eight key areas:

1. Optimize CAF

2. Data quality and integrity

3. Large scale launch and ease of use

4. Realize through cutting-edge technology

5. Meaningful data insights and analysis

6. Stakeholders involved and informed

7. Collaboration and Partnership

8. People and Culture

Looking ahead to the future

SLCP's 2019-2023 business model has been proven to be robust and cautious, achieving self-reliance on revenue in its third year of operation (2021). SLCP will maintain a similar business model in the next three years, while continuing to increase the adoption and use of CAF.

It is feasible to adopt CAF more widely based on experience, feedback from signatories, and trend analysis (including legislative pressure). This will be driven by the expected acceptance of SLCP by smaller brands, the use of CAF by upstream/downstream production layers, compatibility with social standards, and industry expansion.

Therefore, SLCP reiterated its initial goal of 25000 validation evaluations by 2023 as its adoption target for 2026. Conservatively speaking, SLCP's financial model is based on 90% of this target (23000 validated evaluations by 2026), combined with achievable growth in the number of SLCP validation agencies and personnel, as shown in the following figure. The number of verification institutions is expected to reach 124 by 2026, and the number of verifiers will increase to 1750.

The cost types of SLCP are shown in the following figure.

The financial outlook of SLCP for the next three years is shown in the following figure.

It can be seen that SLCP has been steadily developing for many years and has now grown into an independent organization. In the future, SLCP will continue to expand its influence, adjust tools and strategies to achieve a shared vision of improving global working conditions.