Worldly Acquires Fair Factories Clearinghouse And Expands Its Social Impact Offering

Worldly Acquires Fair Factories Clearinghouse And Expands Its Social Impact Offering

Impact intelligence platform Worldly, formerly known as Higg, has announced the acquisition of Fair Factories Clearinghouse’s (FFC) assets. FFC is a non-profit organization that offers data insights, tools and solutions to help firms make informed ethical business transactions and improve global workplaces. 

FFC software solutions offer customized social assessments that help firms in the consumer goods industry to ensure good working conditions, track remediation activity and identify improvement opportunities on ESG issues. The integration of FFC onto Worldly will give factories, brands and retailers access to granular data insights on facilities' ESG performance, complementing the Higg Facility Social & Labor Module currently available on Worldly. By acquiring FFC, Worldly expands its social impact solutions, enabling businesses in the consumer goods industry to understand their global social impact. As a result, Worldly’s customers can access a single repository of industry-specific ESG data intelligence, which will enable organizations to identify improvement opportunities and track suppliers’ social and sustainable actions.

Worldly’s acquisition of FFC follows the market’s appetite for enhanced visibility on supply chain sustainability. With regulatory pressure mounting, organizations must prepare to provide more transparency on their sustainability performance. In the European Union, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) – which will come into force in 2024 – will set a binding duty of care on firms regarding human rights, environmental protection and working conditions. This will require corporates to conduct active analysis of potential risks in the entire value chain (see Verdantix Best Practices: Improving ESG Performance In The Supply Chain). Similarly, the proposed EU Social Taxonomy will cover ESG matters such as working conditions and community engagement (see Verdantix Smart Innovators: Social Impact Solutions).

However, over 40% of firms still rely on manual processes and spreadsheets instead of software to collect and manage sustainability data, which can hinder organizations’ awareness of their social impact across the supplier network (see Verdantix Strategic Focus: Building Resilience Through Supply Chain Sustainability). Manual data-gathering can delay the validation of ESG and sustainability roadmaps, and expose firms to regulatory, financial, operational and reputational risk. Hence, software tools serving social impact and other supply chain sustainability issues — such as Worldly, Ulula and Worldfavor — can help organizations gain access to high-quality sustainability data and foster positive social impact in the supply chain.