Modern slavery act statement

Hippo is a digital consultancy. Due to the nature of our business, we assess ourselves to have a low risk of modern slavery in our business and supply chain. Our supply chain is limited, and we procure goods and services from a restricted range of UK suppliers, including procuring consultancy services from carefully chosen recruiters, consultants and other business partners; IT equipment and related services; and advice from our professional advisers.

Hippo has policies in place to guard against modern slavery, and human trafficking in our supply chains, including all contracts with our business partners, which require prior approval at a board level; and business partners may be subject to various forms of vetting, including the verification of information provided to the company; and we take a risk-based approach to modern slavery and human trafficking due diligence on our suppliers.

Hippo also has policies in place within our organisation that bear direct relevance to combatting modern slavery and human trafficking.  As an equal opportunities employer, Hippo is committed to creating and ensuring a  non-discriminatory and respectful working environment for our staff.  We want all of our staff to feel confident that they can expose wrongdoing without any risk to themselves and we have a whistleblowing policy to allow people to do that. In addition, we also have a code of conduct; bullying and harassment policy and a diversity and inclusion policy with training in place for our staff to complete.  Our recruitment and people management processes are designed to: ensure that we have fair and transparent recruitment procedures; ensure that all prospective employees are legally entitled to work in the UK; and safeguard employees from any abuse or coercion.

Hippo will continue to embed the principles of combatting anti-slavery and human trafficking through:

• providing awareness training to staff as appropriate on the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and informing them of the appropriate action to take if they suspect a case of slavery or human trafficking;
• ensuring that consideration of the modern slavery risks and prevention are added to our policy review process as an employer; 
• continuing to take action to embed a zero-tolerance policy towards modern slavery and human trafficking;
• ensuring that staff involved in buying or procurement and the recruitment and deployment of workers are fully briefed on modern slavery and ethical employment practices; and
• performing appropriate due diligence on our supply chain.  

This statement will be reviewed and updated every year.