The week that was: 1 Apr 08 - 8 Apr 08
Now, we may be wrong here, but Procurement Leaders has never previously viewed India as a hotbed of sexual equality. Not for the first time, though, it looks as though we could be wrong. A brief flick through India’s Economic Times on Monday revealed some telling facts about the way Indian businesses are starting to look to the female population to help fuel one of the world’s fastest growing economies. A bewildering array of incentives are now being offered in an attempt to lure more women into what was, until very recently, a testosterone-only environment. Believe it or not, some companies are even offering existing employees an additional bonus of 25 per cent for referring a female employee. "Women bring in their own perspectives and also a diverse set of views to flow onto the table,” a leading figure said. Quite right.
Figure of the week – 215 per cent – the expected hike in coking coal prices in 2008, after rumours that Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton want the prices to soar to $300 per tonne.
HP last week took the unusual step of naming its top tier suppliers for the first time – and many of them have probably been lift wishing that they hadn’t. European Leaders understands that the move was fuelled by a desire to build more transparency into its supply chain, but all it appears to have done is flag up a worrying lack of progress when it comes to its suppliers respective records in CSR. A relatively high proportion of those suppliers working with the IT giant failed to adhere to an exhaustive lack of guidelines concerning areas such as health and safety and wages and benefits, although HP (unlike those company’s it works with) appears to get a wide-ranging round of applause for its attempts to increase its supply chain visibility - and Procurement Leaders joins the plaudits (you can’t see us right now, but we’re clapping).
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