Gen Z is giving procurement a much-needed makeover

They say chil­dren are the future and they aren’t wrong, except these chil­dren are not so lit­tle any­more and spend less time play­ing out­side and more time tak­ing down the gov­ern­ment. Gen­er­a­tion Z have been seen kick­ing back tear-gas can­is­ters at police, pulling down stat­ues and mak­ing camp in cen­tral Lon­don to protest against cli­mate change. It’s safe to say they feel strong­ly about the envi­ron­ment and social issues. 

Gen Z are all about sus­tain­abil­i­ty, diver­si­ty, eth­i­cal prac­tices and tech­nol­o­gy, and this couldn’t be more in line with the chang­ing role of pro­cure­ment. Choos­ing a career in pro­cure­ment gives grad­u­ates a chance to go straight to the core of the issue and help cre­ate change across the whole busi­ness, includ­ing its extend­ed social impact. 

Not the procurement you once knew

“Pro­cure­ment has evolved, as have pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als,” says SAP chief cus­tomer offi­cer, intel­li­gent spend man­age­ment, Tama­ra Braun. “In the past, pro­cure­ment was more seen as the ‘cor­po­rate police’, a check­point for mak­ing sure all poli­cies are abid­ed by, require­ments are ful­filled and so on,” she says. But the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of much of this polic­ing has enabled pro­cure­ment teams to shed this per­cep­tion. 

Pro­cure­ment is now an inte­gral and strate­gic part of a busi­ness. “More than just man­ag­ing risk along the sup­ply chain, pro­cure­ment is now tasked with ensur­ing sup­pli­ers are strict­ly fol­low­ing codes of con­duct, focus­ing on incor­po­rat­ing diverse and inclu­sive sup­pli­ers in the sup­pli­er base, build­ing and dri­ving a sus­tain­abil­i­ty strat­e­gy for pro­cure­ment, and stay­ing laser focused on the devel­op­ment and reten­tion of tal­ent,” says Braun.

ASOS direc­tor of pro­cure­ment Mike Mir­rlees adds: “It’s an excit­ing time to work in pro­cure­ment and a far cry from how the func­tion is often per­ceived. It’s a role that requires con­stant change and evo­lu­tion to meet busi­ness needs, and where val­ues like crit­i­cal think­ing and chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo can real­ly shine.”

Over the years, “pro­cure­ment has evolved from a reac­tive, back-office func­tion to a crit­i­cal and authen­tic busi­ness part­ner oper­at­ing across the organ­i­sa­tion”, he says. This fast pace of change has meant “agili­ty and strong lead­er­ship skills have become increas­ing­ly impor­tant, as has hav­ing a high lev­el of tech­ni­cal lit­er­a­cy to dri­ve under­stand­ing of the oppor­tu­ni­ties that deploy­ing new tech­nol­o­gy can achieve”.

Like­wise, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the envi­ron­ment and an eth­i­cal approach to doing busi­ness are crit­i­cal when select­ing and man­ag­ing sup­pli­ers. Mir­rlees says: “The ASOS pro­cure­ment func­tion is proud to dis­play the CIPS Cor­po­rate Ethics Mark, show­ing our com­mit­ment to eth­i­cal sourc­ing and sup­pli­er man­age­ment, and pro­fes­sion­als with a pas­sion and exper­tise in this area are more in demand than ever.”

Put your money where your morals are

Although “sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the broad­est sense has always been at the heart of pro­cure­ment, it is seen as crit­i­cal now”, says DHL sup­ply chain vice pres­i­dent and pro­cure­ment direc­tor Nico­la Har­ring­ton.

“The Deutsche Post DHL Group has very ambi­tious goals when it comes to improv­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty across the board, but we’re also see­ing cus­tomers and sup­pli­ers set their own tar­gets to ensure the whole indus­try is work­ing towards the same mis­sion.” 

The con­cept of embed­ding social val­ue with­in pub­lic pro­cure­ment is also grow­ing more impor­tant. There­fore, pro­cure­ment quick­ly shapes up to be the dri­ving force behind social and sus­tain­able ini­tia­tives.

L’Oréal’s pur­chas­ing and sup­ply chain func­tions are cen­tral to its busi­ness strat­e­gy and achiev­ing its sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals, says L’Oréal UK and Ire­land pro­cure­ment direc­tor Gem­ma Bell. “A career in pro­cure­ment should be viewed as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dri­ve pos­i­tive change across a busi­ness and its wider ecosys­tem,” she says.

For exam­ple, the “pro­cure­ment team dri­ves our Sol­i­dar­i­ty Sourc­ing pro­gramme, which directs a pro­por­tion of the group’s glob­al pur­chas­es to sup­pli­ers who give peo­ple from dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds access to work and a sus­tain­able income”, says Bell.  

“Pur­chasers have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be an agent of change and work with sup­pli­ers who we know are com­mit­ted to green prac­tices. We have made it manda­to­ry for all new ten­der process­es to be assessed through a sus­tain­abil­i­ty lens. From pur­chas­ing sus­tain­able mate­ri­als for our dis­play units to select­ing sup­pli­ers with green trans­port capa­bil­i­ties, pur­chasers have the abil­i­ty to dri­ve our sus­tain­abil­i­ty agen­da.”

In with the kids

New tal­ent brings with it new ways of think­ing. For Vol­vo, “it’s of high impor­tance that young peo­ple want to join us, bring­ing fresh knowl­edge, new per­spec­tives, inno­va­tions and curios­i­ty”, accord­ing to Vol­vo Cars Tal­ent Attrac­tion team, which rings true for all busi­ness­es that want to keep up with the times.  

To lure in bright-eyed grad­u­ates, com­pa­nies must have some­thing to entice them with. Braun advis­es: “Pro­vid­ing a sol­id career devel­op­ment path, role-based edu­ca­tion­al pro­grammes, state-of-the-art sys­tems and tools, and access to the newest pro­cure­ment tech­nolo­gies need to be key pri­or­i­ties. This is the expec­ta­tion of ris­ing grad­u­ates in the field of pro­cure­ment. They under­stand their val­ue and expect to be val­ued.”

Har­ring­ton adds: “It’s impor­tant to talk to young peo­ple in spaces that feel nat­ur­al to them.” It’s also about hav­ing a lev­el of under­stand­ing of their needs. “We know that younger tal­ent wants to under­stand how the busi­ness will sup­port them in achiev­ing their long-term goals, and the over­all strat­e­gy and pur­pose of the busi­ness, rather than just what they’ll be involved in day to day. As such, we make sure this is clear from the begin­ning of their inter­ac­tions with us,” she says.

“Our grads are involved in lead­ing projects that real­ly chal­lenge and push the busi­ness for­ward, such as our new­ly intro­duced Inclu­sion Net­works, some­thing we’ve found has been a real draw for those join­ing the team.”

Vol­vo Cars has also found that aware­ness of major projects has drawn in grad­u­ates. “In meet­ings with stu­dents, we at Vol­vo Cars are always trans­par­ent about our trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney, mov­ing towards full elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, autonomous dri­ving and strict­ly online busi­ness. We believe this plays a big role in why stu­dents want to join our com­pa­ny,” accord­ing to the Tal­ent Attrac­tion team.

Vol­vo Cars under­stands that grad­u­ates will grav­i­tate towards busi­ness­es that embody the qual­i­ties they stand for and, cor­re­spond­ing­ly, its sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals make pro­cure­ment a high­ly attrac­tive area for new recruits join­ing the com­pa­ny.