Supply chain responsibility
Our commitment
Nielsen’s commitment to good corporate citizenship and sustainability extends to our supply chain, managing the environmental, social, governance (ESG) and ethical impacts of our purchasing. We know that our spend is a powerful market force, which is why we work to manage it responsibly and sustainably.
As a global company, we have a unique and powerful platform to impact our world for the better. Like the immense purchasing power of individual consumers, we know that our institutional spend of over $2 billion can be a demand signal in the marketplace. We intentionally leverage our spend to drive our business performance and to help:
Integrity and transparency
Improve the integrity and transparency of supply chains globally
Working conditions
Create fairer and more humane working conditions in factories overseas
Community businesses
Support diverse-owned and local businesses in our communities
Resources
Lighten the load on our planet’s resources
Business challenges
Bring innovative product options to the marketplace that can solve business challenges while addressing social and environmental challenges
Understanding our supply chain impacts
Managing our supply chain’s ESG impacts begins with an understanding of the effects, both positive and negative, of our purchasing. In 2016, the first year of our program, we conducted a supply chain sustainability analysis to identify and uncover major sustainability risks and opportunities in our supply chain and to create strategies that address them. As a result, we understand our major supply chain impacts to be as follows, and we are addressing them accordingly within our own function and across functions at Nielsen.
Environmental impact
Energy use/greenhouse gas emissions impact with the technology and travel segments of our supply chain.
Social impact
Human rights risk with the contract manufacturing segment of our supply chain.
Governance/ethical impact
Data privacy and security risks with the advertising and market research segment of our supply chain.
Decreasing negative impacts
Segments of our supply chain can pose particular risks to our social and ethical standards due to their industry and geographic location.
Increasing positive impacts
As a professional services organization, indirect spend accounts for the majority of our supply chain impacts. We have identified numerous ways to increase the positive impacts of that spend.
Our approach
Our approach is simple: We manage our supply chain and purchasing decisions to increase our positive environmental, social and governance/ethical impacts while decreasing our negative impacts.
Policies and business processes
Our procurement and contracting processes include ESG criteria. We require suppliers to demonstrate similar commitments by providing company-level information related to sustainability throughout their tenure servicing Nielsen.
Supplier engagement
We engage with our key suppliers multiple times a year with a focus on ESG issues.
Multi-stakeholder collaborations
We understand the challenges faced in responsible sourcing are far-reaching and best addressed in multi-stakeholder collaborations with other corporations and brands, non-profit organizations and academia, the investor community and suppliers.
