Business Partnerships as a Force for Good: A Tool for Rapid Collaboration?

Partnerships
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Answer from Nahidul Hasan Nayan, of the Awaj Foundation:

First of all Business partnership should be responsible.
It is necessary to establish a fairness in business practice. Fair business should be practiced in all level of value chain.
Accountability should be promoted in every spare of this partnership.
Example: In the globalization era, many business have global link but they are not under an umbrella framework. As a result we show that some of the company wrapped their business during pandemic without considering the livelihood of small business and workers of 3rd world country.

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Q2. What challenges and opportunities are there to make business partnerships more effective in a rapid response to societal shocks?

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Yes Nahidul the initial response of many retailers was to cut flowers - a non essential commodity but an essential industry for those who work in it.

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Hi Katie,
To answer Q2 -
A2: CARE:

Certainly, from the experience over the last year between CARE International and M&S has been the understanding, intelligence (as a business partner), knowledge and flexibility across the partnership to be able to pivot or add the additional response requirements to the existing programme framework. Having a business partner willing and able to grasp the situation quickly and what is required, able to translate this into action through their own capacities in country and engage with their suppliers to support this has been key to its success.

Being able to demonstrate, as we have been able to do so from our previous programme with GSK and M&S and with their suppliers, that having your workforce able to access medical care (especially women’s health if your workforce is 80%+ women workers), hygiene and nutritional support and services, protective measures (such as GBV prevention) has shown suppliers productivity increased. One of the key challenges has been protecting these gains from sudden shocks. CARE has been able to do this by continuing to ensure that women workers both in the factories and in their communities can continue to access medical services and support, remain protected and able to understand, access and incorporate key protective measure from COVID in their work. A lot of this would not have been possible without the business partnership able to engage with suppliers to present this case.

The successes and linkages put in place between the programme in Bangladesh, including the factories and M&S, with both local government systems and support services, and with other businesses have been a real plus and has been a great opportunity to expand the impact of the programme. Having Procter & Gamble for example, willing and able to provide over 150,000 women sanitary products free to the response across both the 25 factories and their communities, supporting over 40,000 women has been a huge benefit and provides opportunities for similar support in the future. The provision of cervical screening, TB testing, child immunization support, social security support from the local authorities to the programme and factory workers, again free of charge, has contributed to greater gains than initially planned and has helped protect the core of the response.

The introduction of new technologies, such as the use of virtual medical platforms and apps for women workers and community members to access medical services and support through tablet stations in the factory and Community Wellbeing Centres takes time to embed and remains a challenge to be widely used as an alternative to face-to-face engagements. Having a business partnership however willing to look at opportunities to explore proof of concept innovative options has really helped from the outset with the vision to go to scale in the future.

And lastly, the business partnership now has a real opportunity to share the learning and positives across the RMG sector and through the BGMEA. Having both M&S willing to champion this with the support of the factory’s management, provides a real opportunity for wider gains if other suppliers see the positives from this business partnership and are willing also to replicate more widely.

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Rapid response key success factors graphic
Rapid response key success factors graphic3724×2630 730 KB

In The Partnering Initiative’s work examining COVID-19 partnerships (including with Endeva, BFP, GIZ, UNDESA), we came across these factors that allowed for rapid partnering. The main thing was the level of threat brought people and organisations around the table (the concept of emergent agency - it was everyone’s problem, everyone had something to contribute). The immediate urgency made them prioritise action. Senior leadership helped to bypass the usual systems and made resources available. There was a genuine of coalescence of (mainly public) interest, and less about what I can get out of it. All together it massively cut the time required to develop some hugely impactful collaborations.

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A2 Fairtrade:
There is an opportunity to work together to respond to shocks in a way which simultaneously builds long-term resilience. On the Building Resilience in Flower Supply Chains Project, we harnessed the momentum generated by the pandemic response to develop project interventions which were both responsive to immediate needs and necessary for building long-term resilience at worker and farm level. Notwithstanding the impact of COVID-19, we knew that flower farm workers earn below a living wage and during the pandemic they were badly affected by redundancies and unpaid leave. We therefore designed a workstream around income diversification for workers to address immediate needs resulting from the crisis and to aid long-term resilience in normal times. We researched suitable income generating activities, provided training on basic financial literacy and developing an idea for an income generating activity, before awarding seed funding to a selection of ideas.

Similarly, we knew that gender inequality remained a major issue on farms despite the majority of workers being female. At the same time, women in Kenya have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, including increased gender based discrimination and violence. In response, we worked with Women Working Worldwide to conduct research into the impact of COVID-19 on women and girls in the wider societal context before providing training to flower farm committees on COVID-19 with a gender lens and developing a tool for training committees and workers on the gender lens. We have therefore made our business partnerships more effective through designing a project that responds to immediate needs at the same time as taking steps to address long-term resilience issues.

https://www.women-ww.org/resilience-in-kenyan-supply-chains

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Global supply chains have been pressured in a myriad of ways during the pandemic, and analysis from this project’s assessment on the impact of COVID-19 and other industry stakeholder research provides evidence that RMG worker communities have been severely impacted. Challenges to business partnerships are often are driven by issues related to demand and pricing. The opportunity herein lies with better understanding how supplier communities, from factory workers down to home-based workers, respond to changes in demand and how they are impacted.

Normalizing honest conversations around the disruptive challenges that sourcing communities face is critical to more effective business partnerships. As an example, the project’s research found that persistent unemployment and wage decreases are the most prevalent issues. Insights into communities that businesses source from are more accessible through partnerships with civil society organizations with local knowledge and presence. By focusing more on the opportunity to understand and therefore build meaningful resilience within sourcing communities, in partnership with civil society organizations, businesses may face less shocks related to satisfying demand.

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Challenges are often a great potential source of opportunity. This has become evident for me when trying to build trust between the various competing entities that formed part of the multi-sectoral partnership I was leading here in Kenya.

Our COVID response effort was initially solely understood as a humanitarian effort, which affected everyone who joined us. I remained committed to this very principle but a level of distrust emerged among our private sector partners when after receiving support from international donors and a large global corporate partner, we started branding some of our content. Before we had refrained from doing so unless we reported back about a specific on the ground effort. However, we moved along with this step due to the potential in helping even more people with the money supplied from outside.

We eventually managed to keep our trust, which I believe was a key component to our success. Crucially, we also kept the same degree of community engagement which was particularly important for the effectiveness of our handwashing and hygiene campaign.

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Another great question. Challenges and opportunities are plentiful when considering rapid response and business partnerships. The Vulnerable Supply Chains Facility reflected on these in the annual review of the programme last year, some of these definitely featured in the panel discussions today. Our review found three areas were key to ensure success:

  1. Working with consortia of both non-profit and for-profit partners brings a fusion of strengths to responsible and inclusive business programming. It is crucial to get these partnerships right and the balance right. The Facility has matched the strengths of civil society organisations (i.e. technical expertise in addressing poverty and working with vulnerable populations) with the reach and scale of business partners. This has created a Facility that delivers projects that offer shared vision and objectives amongst its partners.

  2. Rapid often feels like the dominant objective when considering ‘rapid responses’. It is important to balance the speed of a rapid response with building partner-owned, sustainable, quality activities that lead to longer term resilience. VSCF will run for 12 months, and needs to deliver a high number of short-term outputs in that time – but equally it must ensure that the way in which these outputs are delivered, and the pace at which they are delivered, results in longer-term sustainable benefit which can be taken to scale in the future.

  3. Making sure you disseminate and share lessons as you learn them. This is a huge opportunity. VSCF has needed to ensure a strategic learning agenda which is useful for both ground-level lesson-learning and wider FCDO/private sector sustainability priorities – e.g. showcasing new business models that can be taken up locally, as well as providing achievements and learning (from e.g. Sea Freight and Cocoa projects) for key strategic priorities such as the UK-led COP26.

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Q-2: Response

The biggest challenges are the following:

  • Time constraint -
  • Design phase had to completed so hurriedly that proper consultations could not take place. We had to do virtual communication within a short time
  • It leads to the next challenge --ensuring equal participation is tough
  • ​Difference in priorities of the stakeholders
  • Creating common understanding among all parties regarding vision mission and procedure*
  • Different partners has different levels of internal resources

Opportunities

  • Pandemic put everybody on the same boat. So, everybody knows that we have to sail. Dialogues can bring all to a common understanding through dialogues
  • People are interested to cooperate
    Everybody has some strength, we just need to put those together by complementing and supplementing one another

​

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A2 - Challenge: Failure to adjust systems to rapid response. For example, some businesses still using lengthy procurement process during emergencies. This delays any progress and is not responsive to the needs on the ground.
Opportunities: Increasingly rapid response is tied to business interests, which means that partnerships build around doing the right thing and the bottom line. This is a recipe for more buy-in from all involved.

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A2 Totally agree that the Covid crisis made getting (some) decisions made much easier as we had an agreed sense of purpose. On the challenging side micro-managing short term programmes that are delivering a rapid response to workers and a society in crisis, whilst engaging with business partners who are also trying to deliver their own commercial output and recovery programmes, can over complicate and seriously hamper delivery. Addressing the very real short-term needs through interventions such as health packs and food security exposed the long-term issues and root causes of inequality that many of the project partners have been addressing for years. Expecting transformative change in a year-long project is unrealistic and any future aid programme that works with business needs to factor in the different ‘cultures’, and the time and different delivery methods required for change.

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Another challenge was accomodating the different priorities and capabilities of our different sector partners. While private sector partners were the most agile, resourceful and innovative in terms of driving the response, it was NGO partners from civil society and the development sector, who had reach and essential know how. The Kenyan government, whose health ministry the NBCC supported in COVID communications, logistics and providing access to necessary sanitary facilities, was very helpful to create trust, drive community impact and bring UN endorsement

Insofar, aligning the priorities and capabilities of our different partners brought the opportunity to combine speed and agility with accountability. While challenging to create the space for such cooperation, COVID provided the opportunity to create the possibility of closer collaboration even beyond the crisis and the national borders.

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Well said - and a similar experience at Fairtrade - that the business partnership was able to successfully work with the FCDO and critically respond rapidly to needs, due to a longstanding existing relationship that have built years of trust with affected communities. FCDO support is critical for activation, building on longstanding trusted relationships already in place.

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Thanks Kate, but there is a limitation to sustainability from a short term rapid response to an emergency context without a longer term platform to support this. CARE’s success to date with M&S has been built from the long term partnership and financial support (initially from GSK) over the last five years. After the VSCF programme finishes, many of the opportunities for sustainable development will be restricted without the financial means to support this.

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Q-1: Response

Partnership should be based on responsive shared goal

  • Clear roles and responsibilities to be determined for each actor
  • Transparent and regular communication needs to be ensured
  • Clear coordination structure needs to be put in place
  • There must be flexibility to adapt with changing scenario
  • Required data need to be gathered for making informed decisions. i.e. gender segregated data, costing data etc.
  • ​Collaborative approach gives the best outcome
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I agree with this point Caroline, we trust that all members of the partnership will deliver and discuss solutions if delivery is at risk but delivery capacity is reduced when reporting expectations are overly burdensome relative to the scale and duration of certain projects.

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Q2:

Typically we find that balancing the speed at which corporates work and the expectations they have for partner organisations can be a challenge. However, in this response to the covid crisis, there seems to have been a shift towards more comradery and understanding between the brand and partners. This supportive way of working was critical staying flexible in a constantly shifting context and we hope to carry forward this way of working post-covid.

A challenge is perhaps the balancing act of attempting to implement through innovative approaches (and the need to often learn as we go) with needing to respond quickly. When facing barriers like social distancing, factory closures, production pressures, lockdowns, etc., there’s often a need for start-stop programing which takes time and resources. There needs to be space and understanding for this. By remaining flexible and working towards “no-regret” moves that drive the work forward while experiencing little impact by external factors, the programs can continue to have some level of impact. This in turn needs to be also understood and aligned with funder expectations. Heavy reporting requirements is also challenging in this context.

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A2: It is clear is that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated existing weaknesses in supply chains, which means that we now have the opportunity to pivot our resources towards firming up these areas, and ensuring resilience amongst the communities who were worst hit and learn from our recent experience in responding to the pandemic. Looking ahead, the climate crisis looms large and we must act now to ensure resilience in worst affected areas.

Therefore, there is an opportunity now for businesses to reach through their supply chains to ensure they have the right partnerships in place to respond to the next crisis and build resilience. These partnerships should have at their heart the goal to build trusted relationships with the most vulnerable, but also ensure that dialogue is taking place with all actors in the supply chain (from traders, brands, retailers, as well as transporters and actors) to agree both how to enable a coordinated response in the case of crisis and secondly discussing how to build towards resilience with these groups. Government has a clear role to play in enabling these conversations to take place, and also providing seed funding to business partnerships to put in place these resilience programmes over the next few years, ensuring that the worst hit communities today will not suffer the same consequences in the future. In the Cadbury Farmer Resilience Fund, Fairtrade and Mondelez International already have an eye on this future, both in terms of taking a gender sensitive approach, as well as having coupled our grants approach with workstreams on regenerative agriculture and climate adaptation practices for communities already being hit by the climate crisis, as well as organisational strengthening trainings that will enable farmers to coordinate effective localised responses in partnership with both Fairtrade and MDZ.

A key challenge is to ensure we do not lose the momentum that generated by the COVID-19 pandemic towards effective business partnerships. The pandemic generated a great deal of dialogue and understanding between different supply chain actors, NGOs and government – creating an urgency and level of focus towards what vulnerable communities need, as well as creating a dynamic arena of problem-solving, mutual appreciation and effective deployment of resources. We are in a unique position now to build on these levels of trust and ensure that we bring that same level of focus and attention to continued resilience building in the sectors in which we work.

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A2:

To make business partnerships more effective, expectations need to be adjusted by all parties including fund managers and donors. Working with suppliers / businesses is very different to working with NGOs. Suppliers and businesses have to put their business needs first and therefore the project may not always be top priority – especially during turbulent times when they are doing everything they can to stay afloat. The speed of output achieved by NGOs in development projects can sometimes be difficult to replicate when you are working with, and dependent on supplier engagement for delivery. In addition, fund management needs to be very flexible – with budget lines pivoted to meet emerging needs as the societal shock develops. Rapid response work should be looking for results at the output and outcome level, but long-term, sustainable impact is quite difficult to achieve with short term, rapid response programmes.

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