Step 3 – Understand the Crime
Now that you accept Modern Slavery and exploitation is there and you understand your business constraints, you now need to really understand the crime before you can tackle it.
Firstly, let us understand the crime.
In business we generally are infiltrated by victims of human trafficking for the purposes of forced labour or exploitation.
Human trafficking is made up of three parts.
Action Means and Purpose – The action is the transportation, harbouring or receipt of a person. The means is how they are controlled, and the purpose is always profit.
That is not a crime! That is a business model we all employ. Most businesses take receipt, harbour or transport a product. They control it, modify or change it in some way and only do this for the purpose of making money!
This is a crucial realisation as it helps us really tackle the exploiters. It helps us understand how they think. It helps us understand how their business works and it helps us consider how we can tackle them. We need to think about how we put them out of business.
The second aspect of the crime that is essential is understanding the victims. As a reader I want you to try something. I want you to think of the most embarrassing thing you have ever done in your life. The thing you are so ashamed of that you wouldn’t tell your nearest and dearest. Now I ask that you tell a complete stranger!!!
This is exactly what we are asking of the victims? It’s crazy right? You might be lucky as 1% might tell you (if you can be bothered to ask), but that is not acceptable. We have to assume they are not going to tell us and then we must find a way to look for it.
To do this you must deploy training to help people in your organisation identify the signs of modern slavery or exploitation.
My approach here is not conventional but is effective.
Firstly, training the lowest level is your business is far more effective than training the highest levels. Ensure they know what to look for and what to do with the information they find.
Secondly, be mindful of the signs of modern slavery but don’t waste too much time looking for them. The signs of modern slavery are in effect ‘the presence of abnormal’. They are things that are not normal that you can see. Now, if I am an exploiter and I know you are looking for these signs, I will hide them from you. You will not see them. For example;
If you go looking for a house of multiple occupancy, I will provide multiple false addresses, so you never see more than 3 people from the same address – easy!
You need to look for the absence of normal and this is why training to the lowest levels is so essential. You need to understand the things in an employee’s life that are not normal. The fact people never talk about doing things outside of work, may be an example of something that would be normal but is absent.
Train your staff you CARE for the person next to them and report to supervisors if they have any welfare concerns.
By doing the above you have a business that accepts the risks and an understanding for how those risks get into your business. You have a trained workforce to identify those risks and now you need to develop your systems.