At the beginning of 2020, a sudden epidemic caught everyone who was immersed in the New Year holiday by surprise. Thanks to the implementation of Dell’s “2020 Legacy of Good” social impact goal to promote a flexible office model, 50% of Dell’s employees were prepared to successfully work from home. This allowed our various functional departments to resume normal work quickly. At the same time, our Supply Chain Sustainability team also acted quickly and worked closely with China-based suppliers to take a series of emergency response actions.

In the early stage of the epidemic, our main response actions included:

1. Immediately surveyed factories in our supply chain to understand the impact of epidemic on their operations. Survey results helped Dell to adequately adjust resources and tools to support our suppliers. Dell jointly hosted an online webinar with the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) and Foxconn to provide guidance for suppliers on how to resume production and establish a management system to respond to the epidemic. Dell also shared the best practices on epidemic prevention and control while a factory resumed production and how to avoid or reduce environment, health and safety risks.

2. Hired a qualified third-party vendor to provide hotline service for all employees in the supply chain and conduct stress interventions to eliminate negative psychological effects;

3. Continued to develop and improve the supply chain social responsibility training platform with PC and mobile phone services to provide suppliers with more than 100 environment, safety, and labor related online self-study and live courses. By July 2020, there are more than 6,000 registered users and nearly 10,000 learning hours per year for overall users.

Since April, the epidemic has slowed down in China. In order to enhance the interaction, we have arranged monthly meetings where we host internal experts to answer questions from suppliers and provide technical support on environmental, safety and labor issues. We also cooperated with third-party audit firms to quickly resume the compliance audit plan and complete all the original audit targets in the second quarter. For suppliers with specific difficulties, we provide remote one-on-one consulting services.

Environmental projects are always a key priority for Dell’s Supply Chain Sustainability team. During the epidemic, we worked closely with IPE to continue to collaborate with suppliers on environmental issues improvement and environmental pollution data disclosure. As of early August, more than 80 suppliers have released 2019 PRTR data with the remainder planned to release soon. As we promote environmental transparency, we also encourage suppliers to formulate annual water risk control plans and set up short-term and long-term goals for carbon and waste reduction and trace their achievement of annual targets. In 2019, more than 230 suppliers submitted their water risk management and control plans, and the reuse/recycling rate of solid waste in 5 ODMs (Original Design Manufacturer) suppliers exceeded 90%.

In order to proceed solid waste reductions in the supply chain effectively, we developed an online data collection and evaluation platform, which can ensure the smooth progress of the project through combined self-assessment, remote instruction, data monitoring, and on-site services. Currently, more than 20 key supplier factories have formulated annual waste reduction targets and an implementation plan. Other environmental projects such as sustainable water management, carbon emission data disclosure, energy reduction and efficiency and environmental risk monitoring are also in a good progress. We recently saw one of our Printed Circuit Board (PCB) suppliers successfully pass the Alliance of Water Stewardship Certification with the highest level of performance during the epidemic.

At present, COVID-19 continues to spread around the world, and the macro-environment will be uncertain for a long time. At the same time, expectations from our customers and partners for social responsibility have been growing and will continue to do so in the future. Dell’s continued commitment to advancing sustainability is clearly stated with the launch of Dell’s “2030 Progress Made Real” social impact goals and vision. Dell is committed to working together with our supply chain partners and stakeholders to advance and realize Dell strategy “In China, for China”. For more information, please follow our 2019 Social Impact Corporate Sustainability Report and 2030 Social Impact: Progress Made Real Report

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