Supplier assessments are becoming a standard part of responsible sourcing, but coverage remains heavily concentrated on the largest or most important partners. New LRQA research shows how that approach can leave significant environmental, human rights and compliance risks outside routine procurement scrutiny.
Supplier Assessments Remain Concentrated at the Top
LRQA’s 2026 Climate Performance and Responsible Sourcing Risk Outlook, based on a survey of 837 organizations, found that 44% of respondents responsible for responsible sourcing assess ESG performance among key suppliers only.
Another 20% assess all suppliers, while 21% conduct assessments on an ad-hoc basis. Fifteen percent said they do not assess suppliers at all.
Concentrating resources on strategically important suppliers can make sense when procurement teams are managing large and complex supply bases. But spend and strategic importance do not necessarily correspond with the location of the greatest sustainability or compliance exposure.
Risks involving working conditions, environmental practices and ethical conduct can originate deeper in supply networks, particularly where direct suppliers depend on subcontractors or upstream producers that buyers do not routinely assess.
That makes segmentation increasingly important. Instead of applying identical due diligence requirements to every vendor, LRQA points toward risk-based supplier segmentation that determines the intensity of oversight according to exposure.
Such an approach can preserve the efficiency of key-supplier programs while widening visibility where geography, commodity, industry or other risk factors justify additional scrutiny.
Climate requirements show a similar concentration. LRQA found that 30% of respondents already have climate-related requirements for key suppliers, while 33% are considering introducing them. Just 14% apply climate requirements across their entire supplier base.
That gap matters because much of a company’s emissions exposure can sit outside its own facilities. Under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Scope 3 encompasses indirect value-chain emissions, including categories associated with purchased goods and services, transportation and distribution.
Supplier Engagement Is Becoming the Constraint
Extending requirements across the supply base is not simply a matter of issuing additional questionnaires or adding contract clauses.
LRQA found that 53% of respondents identify supplier resistance or limited engagement as a barrier to responsible sourcing. Cost implications were cited by 47%, while 44% pointed to data availability.
Those figures expose a practical limitation of expanding supplier oversight. Smaller suppliers may have fewer resources, less sophisticated reporting systems or limited capacity to respond to increasingly detailed environmental and social requirements.
LRQA highlights training, capacity building and clearer expectations as ways companies can help suppliers improve performance while preserving stronger commercial relationships.
Climate programs face the same engagement challenge. Only 11% of organizations surveyed strongly integrate suppliers into their climate programs, while 37% report some collaboration. Another 45% report minimal or no supplier involvement.
That distinction between setting requirements and actively involving suppliers is significant. Procurement can mandate reporting or performance thresholds, but the quality of the resulting information depends partly on suppliers having the systems and capabilities to provide reliable data.
As climate, human rights and responsible sourcing requirements increasingly overlap, supplier engagement can therefore become as important as the assessment framework itself.
The Next Risk May Not Be a Major Supplier
Expanding oversight does not necessarily mean auditing every supplier with equal intensity. The stronger model is likely to be one in which procurement combines commercial importance with indicators such as geography, category exposure, environmental impact and supply-chain complexity. That can redirect attention toward suppliers whose spend may be relatively small but whose failure could create disproportionate regulatory, reputational or continuity risk. The value of supplier visibility ultimately depends less on how many companies are assessed than on whether procurement is looking in the places where material exposure actually sits.