ACT (Action, Collaboration, Transformation) released its Accountability and Monitoring Report 2025, which tracks progress on purchasing practices across global garment and footwear supply chains. Drawing on survey data from brands and suppliers, the report assesses how these practices are addressing wage risks and contributing to the enabling conditions for living wages, highlighting the role of responsible purchasing and collective approaches in driving more equitable outcomes.
Human Level’s Take:
- The reported progress points to an overall positive momentum. Brands can sustain this progress by reinforcing gains in areas like forecasting, training, and sourcing practices, while strengthening oversight and review mechanisms to address regressions in incentives and planning.
- However, there is a notable gap between how brands assess their own purchasing practices and how suppliers experience them, in both a positive and negative way. Brands can strengthen alignment by systematically integrating supplier feedback into performance measurement, using it to validate self-assessments, identify gaps, and adjust purchasing practices accordingly.
- Suppliers identify core purchasing practices, particularly price negotiation, forecasting and capacity planning, sourcing strategy, buyer-supplier relationships, and payment terms, as the most critical levers for enabling higher wages. Brands can prioritise these areas by aligning pricing, improving demand planning, strengthening supplier relationships, and ensuring timely payment terms to better support suppliers’ ability to deliver higher wages.
- Both brands and suppliers report a decline in the effectiveness or prioritisation of incentives, compliance scoring, and forecasting and capacity planning compared to 2023. Brands can review and strengthen incentive structures and forecasting practices, ensuring they are aligned with responsible purchasing goals and provide clearer, more consistent signals to suppliers.
- Social dialogue is a key enabler of improved working conditions and more resilient supply chains, supported by the joint responsibility of brands and suppliers to uphold freedom of association and collective bargaining. Both can strengthen social dialogue by actively supporting worker representation and creating structured channels for ongoing engagement with workers and their representatives.
Some key takeaways:
- Measurable progress in purchasing practices, with ongoing gaps in consistent implementation: Based on data from 1,049 brand employees across 18 signatory brands and 1,055 suppliers in over 70 production countries, the findings indicate progress across several purchasing practice areas. This includes more consistent use of forecasting and capacity planning, improved internal alignment through training and awareness, and greater integration of responsible sourcing and product development processes. Brands also report steps toward more structured approaches to pricing discussions and stronger supplier engagement. At the same time, differences in supplier feedback and limited alignment between reported commitments and lived experiences indicate that challenges remain in translating these efforts into consistent outcomes across supply chains.
- Uneven alignment between brand commitments and supplier experience across purchasing practices: Across the five ACT Global Purchasing Practices Commitments, the report finds varying levels of progress and alignment between brand reporting and supplier experience. While brands report implementation of policies and practices across areas such as fair pricing, stable order placement, and responsible sourcing, supplier feedback indicates mixed experiences, particularly in core commercial practices like pricing and order changes. Greater alignment is observed in areas related to training, awareness, and product development. Overall, the findings point to inconsistencies between reported commitments and on-the-ground outcomes, highlighting the importance of continued monitoring and dialogue between brands and suppliers.
- The inevitability of social dialogue for resilient supply chains and better working conditions: The report highlights social dialogue as a necessary component for building resilient supply chains and improving working conditions, as it enables ongoing communication between brands, suppliers, and workers. By fostering structured engagement and collective problem-solving, social dialogue helps address workplace issues more effectively, supports the implementation of fair purchasing practices, and strengthens trust across the supply chain. It is presented as a key mechanism for aligning business practices with worker needs and for ensuring that improvements in labour conditions are both sustained and scalable.
