Electronics

The electronics industry is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide. It has a complex and widely interconnected supply chain. Over 15 million employees work in the electronics sector, with China as a major production hub.

To read more details about the program, click here to visit our implementing partner website.

Yet the rapid growth has resulted in sustainability issues in various aspects of the manufacturing industry, bringing challenges to  supplier factories’ labor and environmental conditions, as seen from poor workplace practices, insufficient recycling practices and illegal dumping of electronic waste.

Employing a multi-stakeholder approach, IDH’s Electronics program supports the development of sustainable workforce management innovations for over 100 suppliers. Different from other CSR programs which have been carried out in the industry all along, the program steers away from traditional auditing methods and seeks to make a transforming impact by building and up-scaling capacity of both workers and management. Through enhancing worker-management dialogues and developing employees’ skills and careers,  we strive to lower employees turnover and wastage, boost energy efficiency and improve overall performance of supplier factories.

Program at a glance

Impact on MDGs
	Improved rights and working conditions for 500,000 workers	Significant improvement in CO2/waste/water usage issues in supplier factories	Sustainably produced exports by 100 suppliers
Sustainable Economic growth	The program focus is on supplier factories and raising their level of sustainability in order to be able to meet a growing demand for sustainably produced half fabricates.
Private Sector Development	This is done by finding a balance between improving sustainability and professionalization of the suppliers'  operation. After the gap-assessment a variety of trainings will be offered for capacity building of different level of staff (from work force to senior management).
Economic Empowerment	Collaboration with local government and international industry platforms is set up to make growth sustainable.
Importance for the Netherlands	Global headquarters of Philips (in top 10 of electronic companies worldwide)is in the Netherlands. The whole ICT sector has an annual turnover of 30.9 billion euros and provides 250.000 direct FTEs.