Our progress and commitment in 2024
Our purpose is to provide sustainable, innovative vehicle mobility solutions. This includes ensuring that human rights are upheld through all of our relationships and ensuring that modern slavery and human trafficking are not present in our business or supply chain.
This is our eighth annual Transparency Statement covering our financial year up to the end of March 2024. We’re proud to share the strides we’ve made in this critical area, in line with the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
“The risk of modern slavery is increasing, both within the UK and globally. At Zenith, we’re addressing this through our People Powered Impact plan. Within our business and through our supply chain partners, we’re committed to delivering a safe and healthy workplace, free from exploitation and discrimination.”
Mark Wilson, Sustainability Manager
About our organisation
A leader in ethical vehicle solutions
Zenith Group is the UK’s leading independent leasing, vehicle outsourcing, and fleet management provider. We have almost 170,000 vehicles under management across the following Group companies:
- Zenith Vehicle Contracts Limited
- Provecta Car Plan Limited
- Leasedrive Limited
- ZenAuto Limited
- Contract Vehicles Limited
- Contract Vehicle Fleet Services Limited
- Contract Vehicles Rentals Limited
- Zenith Remarketing Limited
We operate from fourteen locations across the UK, including two main offices in Leeds and Altrincham, eleven rental yards, and one HGV workshop.
You can find out more about Zenith’s purpose, values, and structure within our FY24 Annual Report.
A SUPERB TRACK RECORD
0
incidents or reports of modern slavery at Zenith or within our supply chain
Low risk
of modern slavery within Zenith or our supply chain
Our people
Our culture is driven by our people promise, with three clear focus areas of creating a thriving culture, with brilliant teams that are designed for growth. Our promise is underpinned by commitments to provide a fair deal for all and an exceptional colleague experience.
Our team includes administration staff, professional services roles such as finance, information technology and marketing, customer service representatives, sales professionals, skilled automotive mechanics, technicians, and welders.
Further information on our culture and colleagues can be found within our FY24 Annual Report.
Our supply chain
Diverse, dynamic, and diligent
We work closely with our supply chain partners to develop strong relationships, based on shared values, that uphold and promote human rights.
- Our supply chain includes suppliers of both goods and services.
- Key supplier partners such as vehicle manufacturers and some IT software providers are based internationally. These are respected multi-national organisations with mature corporate governance frameworks.
- Our day-to-day operational suppliers are UK-based. This includes essential fleet management services, such as glass and tyre replacements, licence checking, emergency assistance, bodyshops and garages, professional services, and marketing.
- We take a collaborative approach with our supply chain, which encourages transparency. We will provide appropriate support, guidance and monitoring to tackle any reported issue.
We’re continually refining our understanding of our supply chain, working closely with our suppliers to ensure transparency and ethical practices at every level, including understanding the additional tiers of our supply chain.
Further information on our supply chain can be found within our FY24 Annual Report.
Our policies
A robust framework for ethical business
We are committed to ensuring that our modern slavery risk remains low through the following activities:
- A human rights and anti-slavery policy.
- Our Employee Handbook sets out our approach to and expectations of colleagues regarding equal opportunities, recruitment and selection, discrimination and harassment, and whistleblowing.
- All new and re-negotiated supplier partner contracts include modern slavery provisions.
- Zenith mitigates the risk of doing business with organisations who are controlled by sanctioned individuals or legal entities. We ensure this through sanctions checking conducted via a third-party tool and governed by our anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML and CTF) policies.
- Supplier Governance and Risk Forum including key stakeholders from Legal, Compliance, Procurement and Operations. They are responsible for identifying, assessing and managing compliance risks across our supply chain partners, including modern slavery.
- A supplier lifecycle policy, Supplier Charter and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) policy.
PROACTIVE AND COMPREHENSIVE
Risk is assessed through workshops with key colleagues from our People Team and those with responsibility to manage supplier relationships.
Through our assessment, we are confident that our own policies, procedures, standards and controls, and those operated by our supply chain partners, ensure that the risk of modern slavery offences is low within Zenith or across our value chain.
THOROUGH AND PROPORTIONAL
Any supplier issues that sit outside of our risk appetite may result in Zenith not engaging further with them. For existing suppliers, it may result in a termination of supply, reduced volume of business or non-inclusion in future tender opportunities.
Procurement process
Training programme
Empowering our team with knowledge and awareness
We believe that knowledge is power. That’s why we invest in comprehensive training programmes to ensure our team is well-equipped to identify and prevent modern slavery and human trafficking.
- Modern slavery e-learning module
Colleagues from our Recruitment, Procurement, and Legal & Compliance teams must complete this course as part of their annual essential training. The course is also available for all our other colleagues to complete voluntarily. - Whistleblowing policies and procedures
We value and promote a ‘speak up’ culture where individuals are encouraged to report any unethical or illegal activities to an independent third-party whistleblowing hotline. Colleagues and any third party can report through this anonymously and confidentially. - Regular training and communications on financial crime
Modern slavery and human trafficking offences are often linked to financial crime such as bribery, money laundering, corruption, and fraud. We provide regular training and communications on these topics, including through our Academy Learning Management System (LMS). - Cognexo
We assess understanding of modern slavery through the Cognexo learning tool that sends daily questions to colleagues. This measures knowledge and reports against KPIs, ensuring our team is consistently up to date on the latest information and best practices.
Through these initiatives, we’re empowering our team to play an active role in our commitment to ensuring that modern slavery does not occur in Zenith or our supply chain.
Our effectiveness
Key performance indicators (KPIs)
600+
colleagues voluntarily completed the training
0
modern slavery concerns reported through our whistleblowing hotline
100%
of new suppliers assessed against modern slavery and human trafficking risk
89%
completion rate for colleagues required to complete modern slavery training as part of their roles
We have assessed our modern slavery risk as low.
This is based on our locations being UK-based, our colleagues performing skilled professional roles, our employment practices and controls, and our rigorous supply chain due diligence and monitoring practices.
Within Zenith
We have the following controls in place to ensure that modern slavery is not present within our own operations:
- Our office locations being entirely UK-based.
- Our employees are generally skilled professionals.
- Our employees are largely directly employed by Zenith.
- We have minimal use of temporary or agency employment.
- Annual training for key colleagues
- Independent third-party whistleblowing hotline – Colleagues can report instances of modern slavery to HR directly, their manager or through an independent third-party hotline.
Our suppliers
Through our risk assessment, we have identified three areas of potential risk for the transport industry. In the following sections, we explain the steps we take to ensure that modern slavery is not present within these activities of Zenith’s supply chain.
Our journey ahead
Committed to continuous improvement
To continue to ensure that we have zero incidents of modern slavery within our business and supply chain, and to keep it as a low risk, we are focused on the following areas in the next 12 months:
Supplier engagement
- Engage the vehicle manufacturers directly regarding their procedures and controls to ethically source the raw materials in their EV batteries.
- Increased sustainability-focussed engagement with our key suppliers through our newly appointed Supplier Relationship Manager.
- Relaunching our Supplier Charter with key suppliers.
Awareness-raising
- Continue annual modern slavery workshops with key stakeholders from our people team, procurement, and colleagues with supplier management responsibilities.
- Annual review of our modern slavery e-learning module.
Policies and procedures
- Review our Human Rights and Anti-Slavery Policies to focus on ensuring that our processes are appropriate, from our identification and reporting across to our victim and survivor support procedures.
- Annual review of all policies and procedures.
This Statement is made in accordance with section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and has been approved by the Board of Directors.
Mark Phillips
Chief Financial Officer
Zenith Group
26th September 2024