Covid-19 & Social Audits: What Have We Learnt?

This paper examines the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on global supply chains, from a modern slavery perspective. It particularly focuses on how modern slavery has impacted the ability of companies to conduct social audits and reach workers within their supply chains. We consider the use of technology to overcome the disruption caused by Covid-19, with a focus on Apprise Audit, a piece of worker engagement technology developed by the Mekong Club and United Nations University Institute in Macau. This paper includes interviews and testimonials from global companies as well as extracts from worker interview data sets collected by the Apprise Audit platform.