Firemind’s Modern Slavery & Human Trafficking Statement
April 6th 2023 – April 5th 2024
Here are the steps Firemind has taken, and continues to take, to understand and minimise the potential risk of modern slavery in its business and supply chains.
This statement is published in line with section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
What is Modern Slavery
Modern Slavery is a term used to encapsulate both offences in the Modern Slavery Act: slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour; and human trafficking. The offences are set out in section 1 and section 2 of the Act.
About Firemind
Firemind provides cloud consultancy for a wide variety of businesses. We are a partner of Amazon Web Services (AWS), working closely with them to support cloud infrastructure and best practices with customers of all business types.
We support strong relationships between employers, employees and partners, all of which underpin our business success.
Our commitment to the principles of the Modern Slavery Act 2015
Firemind is committed to the principles of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and the abolition of modern slavery and human trafficking.
As an equal opportunities employer, we’re committed to creating and ensuring a non-discriminatory and respectful working environment for our staff. We want all our staff to feel confident that they can expose wrongdoing without any risk to themselves.
Our recruitment and people management processes are designed to:
• Ensure that all prospective employees are legally entitled to work in the UK.
• Safeguard employees from any abuse or coercion.
We do not enter into business with any organisation, in the UK or abroad, which knowingly supports or is found to be involved in slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour.
Our supply chain
Due to the nature of our business, we assess ourselves to have a very low risk of modern slavery in our business and supply chains.
Our supply chains are extremely limited as we do not deal in tangible/physical goods and rely on our internal team to create digital products,solutions and/or services.
What little physical goods we procure are from services from a restricted range of UK and overseas suppliers, mainly through UK government frameworks.
AWS (our direct partner) has also published its statement on slavery and human trafficking. This includes mechanisms for guarding against modern slavery in its supply chains, governance, responsibility and public audit results.
You can read their full statement here.
Our policies in relation to the Modern Slavery Act 2015
The following policies are available to all staff through their Firemind company handbook, as well as through our private intranet:
• Code of conduct
• Ethics policy
• Whistleblowing policy
• Bullying and harassment policy
• Diversity and inclusion policy
• Recruitment and selection policy
• Embedding the principles
We will continue to embed the principles through:
• Providing awareness training to staff on the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and informing them of the appropriate action to take if they suspect a case of slavery or human trafficking.
• Ensuring staff involved in procurement activity are aware of and follow modern slavery procurement guidance on GOV.UK.
• Ensuring that consideration of the modern slavery risks and prevention are added to Firemind’s policy review process.
• Making sure Firemind and AWS procurement strategies and contract terms and conditions include references to modern slavery and human trafficking.
• Continuing to take action to embed a zero tolerance policy towards modern slavery.
• Ensuring that staff involved in buying or procurement and the recruitment and deployment of workers receive training on modern slavery and ethical employment practices.
Risk Assessment & Management
As a partner of AWS, we rely on their internal services and digital products to fulfil our obligations to our customers. As such, we closely monitor AWS services, tools and cloud based solutions, knowingly keeping up to date with their own internal teams and staffing – responsible for the creation and maintenance of said cloud solutions.
On the rare occasion that we have to outsource our workload with external contractors, we ensure a deep vetting process takes place. Maintaining that the work is carried out by individuals free from constraints, receiving a fair wage and rate of pay.
This statement has been approved by Charlie Hudson, Managing Director, for the financial year ending 5th April 2024.
This statement will be reviewed and updated every year.
To view Firemind’s Privacy Policy, please visit this link.