Transparency in Supply Chains (TISC): Modern Slavery Act Statement
The IET runs its activities with integrity. Modern slavery is a complex and multi-faceted crime and tackling it requires all of us to play a part. The IET is committed to preventing acts of modern slavery and human trafficking from occurring within its business and supply chain and to improving our practices to combat slavery and human trafficking.
The Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires UK organisations with an annual turnover of £36m or more to report on the steps they are taking to ensure that modern slavery is not taking place in its supply chains and publish with a link via the home page on its website. This includes the IET.
The IET
The IET is one of the world’s largest engineering institutions with members all over the world. It is a body incorporated by Royal Charter and is registered with the Charity Commission in England and Wales (Charity no 211014), and the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (Charity no SC038698). The IET has two active wholly owned non-charitable trading subsidiary undertakings registered in England and Wales, IET Services Ltd (company registration no 909719), and IET Conventions Limited (company registration no 3566585).
The IET has a number of other subsidiaries as listed below:
- IET Engineering and Technology Consultancy (Beijing) Company Limited - Unified social credit number: 911101056843540445
- The Institution of Engineering and Technology (INSPEC Asia Pacific Representative Office) - 33365035-000-02-24-7 (Certificate No.)
- The Institution of Engineering and Technology, USA
- IET USA, Inc – 0100728916
- IET (Canada) - Corporation number: 822405-6
- IET Services (India) Private Limited - U93000KA2012FTC064117
- IET Section 8 - U80903KA2007NPL044461
- IET Solutions (India) Private Limited - U80902KA2020FTC133624
The IET’s charitable objects and purposes are as set out in section 3 of its Royal Charter. The IET is working to engineer a better world by inspiring, informing and influencing our members, engineers and technicians and all those impacted by the work of engineers. It does this through various channels including publications, events, conferences, networking and advice. At the end of 2024 the IET has a global community of over 157,000 members.
The IET has offices in the UK, China, Hong Kong, India and the USA. In 2024, it had a global income of approximately £64.1m and in 2024 employed an average of 576 people worldwide. Its activities are supported by over 3,900 engaged volunteers worldwide. The IET recognises the risks of modern slavery are higher in some parts of the world in which it operates membership and other activities and takes these risks very seriously. The IET works with its subsidiaries and international partners to ensure that modern slavery is not present in their operations and activities.
The IET’s Supply Chain
In order to deliver its activities, the IET works with a range of suppliers, including publishing services, software services, catering and facilities management, and professional services.
Our Investments
We require our Investment Advisers and Investment Managers to have an anti-modern slavery policy in place. All our investment managers’ Modern Slavery polices are publicly available. The selection of new investment managers is based on recommendations put forward by our investment adviser (Mercers), as part of their regular review of our investment strategy. Mercer only put forward suitable investment manager candidates that have embedded policies and procedures on such matters.
Policies
The IET has an Anti-Slavery Policy in place for staff and volunteers, and offers guidance on whistleblowing on its website at https://www.theiet.org/membership/professionalism-and-ethics/professional-ethics-resources/whistleblowing-guidance-for-members/ as well as having staff and volunteer Policies on whistleblowing. The IET also has a comprehensive Procurement Policy in place which sets out a procurement framework designed to ensure that modern slavery is not present within the IET’s business.
The IET’s Rules of Conduct for Members embed ethical behaviour across IET’s membership and oblige members to observe the provisions of the Statement of Ethical Principles published by the Engineering Council and the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Actions to minimise risk of Slavery
The IET takes a multifaceted approach, which includes:
During 2020 and ongoing into 2024, the IET requested, via our procurement policy and forms, that all contracts must include anti-slavery statements. In 2023 a project to review all standard templates was started, and was ongoing throughout 2024, and all the templates reviews that have been completed contain the appropriate anti-slavery statement.
In early 2024 the IET was delighted to acquire the WISE Campaign, a Community Interest Company (C.I.C – 07533934). WISE was established in 1984 and provides practical help for individuals, organisations and businesses through its products, as well as contributing to a wide range of campaigns to raise the profile of women and girls in STEM.
As part of the acquisition into the IET family, a due diligence process was completed, which included assurance of WISE’s anti-slavery commitments. In May 2024, the WISE Campaign’s Anti-Slavey and Human Trafficking Statement was updated.
Futures Place, our main office based in Stevenage remains an area of focus, including for cleaning and catering services. Operatives are on site so any unusual work practises would be visible. Catering and cleaning are also generally consistent, allowing individuals to become known to facilities colleagues over time and relationship developed.
IET Venues – Savoy Place and Austin Court - have contracts running to include maintenance, cleaning and security and catering services. The Venues have competitive tenders every 3 or 5 years for each service. Contractors are required to supply their Anti-Slavery Policies or a statement that they are not in breach of the Modern Slavery Act. Our tender documentation includes a provision for the mandatory exclusion of any bidder convicted of an offence under sections 1, 2 or 4 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The contracts between the IET Venues and its suppliers has the relevant section and clauses for the Compliance with Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Laws.
Technology contracts are split into strategic, operational and commodity as classes of importance. They are reviewed on a regular basis and on their renewal cycle – all our key contracts have modern slavery clauses in them.
With regards to countries which may be considered higher risk, for IT, the key locations are Bulgaria for Ontotext and India for NEC Software and River Valley Technologies (RVT). All have UK offices / are part of larger international corporations. It is considered that the likelihood of risk is very low with these 3 suppliers and there was no impact in 2024.
As part of ongoing due diligence, regular meetings with suppliers in Bulgaria and India are held to ground truth the situation with regard to our key strategic suppliers – we look to visit at least once a year. For example, in 2024 NEC Software were visited twice to discuss matters with their senior management, RVT visited in December and we have regular account manager contact. These regular meetings will continue into 2025+.
Our recruitment practices help prevent the risk of modern slavery within our organisation. Our employment agreements and policies are managed locally, based on global templates and principles but adapted for the relevant local context and applicable law.
Some of the other Human Resources measures which the IET has in place include:
- Conducting vetting checks of prospective recruits before extending an offer of employment/prior to start date (whichever is more appropriate/suitable) and a police (where appropriate) and reference check prior to start date (double-stage process)
- Conducting regular salary reviews to ensure that staff are paid a living wage in the countries it operates in, and benchmarking salaries to ensure that they remain competitive in the sector
- Checking, but not withholding, identity documents and rights to work documentation;
- Providing information on workers’ rights in a language they can understand
- Not allowing fines levied to be passed onto employees, for workers to be charged finders’ fees, and not deducting accommodation or transport costs from staff salaries
- Ensuring Right to Work checks are completed in-line with legal obligations for all UK Employees
- Ensuring recruitment practices and processes are transparent and free from coercion and/or exploitation
- The adoption of a zero-tolerance approach to forced labour, ensuring that our vacancies are filled through free and informed choice
- Extension of our anti-slavery practices all third-party Recruitment Agency vendors
Continuous review and risk mitigation
The IET Anti-Slavery Policy sets out the IET’s principal risk areas. The IET recognises the need to continually assess the risks of slavery or human trafficking. The IET also recognises that there may be gaps in visibility of supply chains and limitations in the tools used to identify risks. Addressing these is a complex task and is under continuous review to develop an effective framework. The IET recognises the need for modern slavery training across the organisation to widen awareness, particularly for those staff members who are involved in managing recruitment and our supply chains and during 2024 rolled out an eLearning module to all IET staff on Modern Slavery 96% of staff have completed this training within the last two years
To date, the IET has not found any instances of modern slavery in its operations or supply chain.