Modern Slavery Statement 2022
This statement has been published in accordance with the Modern Slavery Act 2015. It sets out the steps The Entertainer has taken as a business during the financial year ending January 2022 and sets out plans to prevent modern slavery and human trafficking within our business and supply chain.
The Entertainer’s policies and practices reflect our commitment to act ethically and with integrity in all our business relationships, which includes implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to ensure that no slavery and human trafficking is taking place anywhere within our business or supply chain.
The Entertainer will not work with those that are involved with human trafficking or slavery.
Our Business
The Entertainer is a family-owned high street toy retailer in the UK. The business operates over 170 stores in the UK, a successful ecommerce business along with a growing international business through its franchise partners and its wholly owned Spanish business, TEAL Retail Spain Slu, trading as Poly Jugettes. We work closely with our sister company, Addo Play LTD who are specialists in product development and toy sourcing.
The business is built upon strong values. It donates 10% of trading profits, over time, to a range of charitable causes and cares passionately about the wellbeing of its people.
We are proud of our values which uphold and proclaim the dignity of all, in particular children. We are committed to the eradication of slave labour and human trafficking. This includes ensuring that our suppliers are free from such practices, in so far as the company, its contractors and subcontractors can control or influence such actions.
Our Supply Chain
Products sold in the Entertainer are sourced globally. We expect those within our supply chain to respect the rights, wellbeing and welfare of their workforce and their working environment.
All suppliers must adhere to our requirements set out in our existing supplier code of conduct; no forced, bonded or child labour, no slavery or human trafficking, no discrimination, no harsh or inhumane treatment, freedom to choose employment, hygienic and safe working environment, minimum living wage payment, no excessive working hours with at least one day off in every seven, freedom of association and collective bargaining.
Our supplier base is approved and monitored through our factory audit programme. This has been stalled due to COVID-19, but we have been working with our suppliers and ADDO team in the far east to ensure a plan can be restarted once travel restrictions are relaxed.
Overview of progress during 2021
We have set up our Modern Slavery working party which is a cross functional group from all areas of The Entertainer and ADDO. The main objective of the group is to create, deliver and audit the Entertainer's modern slavery policies and procedures.
Supply Chain and Employment
Our Supplier Conduct Manual has been reviewed, updated, and will be reissued to our suppliers later in 2022.
Our Logistics and Employment agencies have been audited and have thorough and detailed processes and procedures as part of their onboarding and employment to identify Modern Slavery and Forced Labour in their workforce.
We have reviewed our own internal recruitment documentation, and this meets our policy requirements.
Training
All members of the senior leadership team have had an awareness and training session with our partners from Slave Free Alliance.
All line and employing managers have completed an online Modern Slavery awareness course on our online training portal. This included an Introduction to Modern Slavery, how to spot the signs, size of the problem worldwide, as well as information around reporting internally and our policies.
Due Diligence
Our Modern Slavery working party meet periodically through the year to review progress through our plan, discuss any issues and agree actions for the coming months. The group is made up of managers from all areas of the business, including Buying, Logistics, Supply Chain, QA and our People management team.
We have an Operating Board Sponsor who is a member of the Modern Slavery working party.
Monthly Board Meeting updates on progress are produced and shared for the Operating Board Meetings.
Following our meetings with our UK workforce providers we have open dialogue and updates from them on actions taken following any investigations they complete involving any of the labour provided to us.
Policies
Our Supplier Conduct Manual outlines the minimum standards we expect of all those who supply products or services. It includes topics such as forced labour, child labour, working hours etc.
Our Modern Slavery Policy has been updated to include changes to policies/procedures we have made during the previous 18 months.
Recruitment Policy – as well as the right to work evidence, we also conduct checks on bank accounts (no duplicate accounts on our system), all interviewees are seen face to face. This also aligns with our labour agencies who have stringent checks that they conduct at onboarding stage.
Next Steps
For continual improvement and to ensure our business and supply chain is free from slavery and human trafficking, we commit to the following future steps.
Factory Audits – we will be engaging with third party auditors to conduct ethical audits on our direct manufacturing facilities in China.
We will be creating a training programme for all our business teams, focussing on awareness and reporting. This will enhance the existing training and enable more of the store and warehouse teams to have awareness training.
We will continue to monitor our policies and set KPIs for the business to ensure we are achieving our objectives.
We will complete Audits and monitoring of UK labour providers, this will cover our 2 main UK warehousing operations.
We will further develop our whistleblowing processes/hotline for the business and supply chain.
Our Modern Slavery Statement was prepared by our Modern Slavery Working Party and has been approved by the Board of Directors.
Mark Campbell
Group CEO
August 2022