Earlier this year, the Investor Alliance for Human Rights called on companies to demonstrate their respect for human rights across their supply chains, through transparent and rigorous due diligence processes. Indeed, since the endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs) on Business and Human Rights by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011, business enterprises and global companies have been frequently called upon to take steps to comply with the responsibility to protect, respect and remedy human rights. The report “The Road from Principles to Practice. Today’s Challenges for Business in Respecting Human Rights”, based on a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2014, evidenced an overall positively changing attitude in corporations’ perception of their business operations’ impact on human rights but that there was still a need to determine why companies are not ensuring substantive implementation of their obligations.
Now five years on and a decade after the UNGPs, proper change beyond mere compliance with international obligations for some reason remains lacking. Research continues to show that businesses’ attitude towards addressing adverse human rights is limited and that compliance is often a checkbox exercise framed in technical, abstract terminology, that detracts from the real human impact of these operations. Meaningful implementation is further impaired by inaccurate auditing of supply chains, an overall detachedness to the core issues, and a lack of understanding of the risks and consequences entailed in the failure to take action. Particularly telling have been the results published by the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, showing several high-profile companies scoring below zero on all five human rights indicators (governance and policy; respect and due diligence; remedy and grievance mechanisms; performance: practices and responses; transparency). This is indicative of a need for a detailed look at what is needed to transform the “either human rights or profit” attitude present in many businesses.
Indeed, recent developments demonstrate that any form of involvement in instances where human rights are adversely affected, be it in companies’ supply chains or otherwise, will result not only in a substantially negative backlash on the business itself but also affect the reputation of associated stakeholders. This can often lead to significant financial repercussions, including at the most serious end, costly litigation. This low performance also prevents effective ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investments due to companies’ poor performance in evaluations. It can also make access to normal lending difficult.
It is, therefore, in the interest of all stakeholders – companies, workers, partners, and investors combined – that measures start to be taken to properly address the human rights impact of businesses. Serious behavioural change needs to target the inhibitors that are stopping businesses from doing the right thing when it comes to human rights.
In GRC we are human rights lawyers and BHR advisers who know the law inside out and who regularly consult on business policies, processes, risk assessment, due diligence remedy mechanisms and training to ensure your company takes the human rights approach it needs to to stay on the right side of the law. This means we’ve got your back. However, as legal BHR experts, we are also best placed to know the limitations of taking a legalistic approach when it comes to affecting the behavioural change necessary, making it easy for your company to keep on the right side of the intent of the burgeoning area of legislative and judicial precedent in BHR.
We work with our corporate clients to help them transform into human rights leaders alongside their peers, not by taking a tick box compliance approach which in the end will fail them, but by taking them through our BHR legal behavioural change programme where together we devise a cost effective human rights behavioural change strategy in keeping with where they are in their human rights journey. This ensures that the company complies with the tapestry of complex soft and hard law in this growing area – which is also just better for business. We have found that no company is too small or too big to benefit from our approach.
The time is right to contact GRC about how we can work with you as behavioural change in support of a human rights approach needs to happen sooner rather than later – this is particularly critical in the run down to the EUmHRDD that will likely move human rights requirements from a best practice space into formalised legislative requirements carrying heavy penalties for non-compliance.
With decades of experience, Global Rights Compliance (GRC) works with companies, investors, and organisations to address the potential adverse human rights and environmental impacts resulting from business operations. We work side by side with our clients to help ensure they become leaders among their peers on these issues. Our services include legal advice, consultancy services on policies, procedures and training, global supply chain assessments and due diligence, and designing and implementation of grievance mechanisms.
While we know the law and what you need to do, we also know that real change comes through behavioural change. As such we work innovatively, side by side with our clients in a very practical way to ensure they genuinely become a rights-based company that is also just a better business.
To learn more about our work, please click here. To make an enquiry please email bhr@globalrightscompliance.co.uk.