Skip to content
Navigation

Beginning the human rights journey

The first steps in any journey are often the hardest.

It is no different with efforts to begin addressing a company’s human rights challenges. Working out where to start, which direction to go in and what to aim for can make it difficult to get started. Many people can also be nervous about discussing human rights with their colleagues.

The most important thing is to take a first step. For example, familiarise yourself with key standards, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (or UNGPs). Have a conversation with your manager. Conduct desk research to identify common issues in your company’s industry or region. Or incorporate a human rights lens into how the company responds to a specific situation. Once that first step has been taken, the next will become clearer – and you can begin to build confidence and a more comprehensive roadmap for this work.

Importantly, the term ‘human rights journey’ does not mean there is a destination, or an end to the journey. A company’s human rights risk landscape will evolve with its business. Accordingly, efforts to manage these risks need to be ongoing and adapted as circumstances change.


HOW HAVE THE UNGPS BEEN HELPFUL FOR YOUR COMPANY?
HOW A ‘HUMAN RIGHTS LENS’ HELPED SYNGENTA MANAGE RISK

What does getting started look like in practice?

Before you start a conversation:

  • Make sure you fully understand the UNGPs, as well as relevant laws and standards.
  • Think about your business and operations, and where human rights could be impacted.
  • Map the policies you already have in place - e.g. regarding health and safety, people and the company's supplier code of conduct - these may already contain human rights commitments, even if they do not use the term 'human rights'.

Ways to start a conversation:

  • Convene senior leaders from diverse business functions to explore what human rights means for the company.
  • Speak with external experts, such as professional advisors, to learn more about the business and human rights landscape. 
  • Engage with peers and industry associations to learn from others.

Ways to begin working to identify and address human rights risks:

  • Undertake desktop research to learn more about key risks for your company’s industry and the regions it operates in.
  • Develop a business case for your company to devote resources to understanding and managing human rights risks.
  • Dedicate some budget and staff time to a pilot project to explore applying concepts from the UNGPs in practice.

The UN Guiding Principles: An Introduction


What are the UN Guiding Principles?

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, or UNGPs, are the authoritative, global framework to address business and human rights challenges. They have clarified the respective roles of States and companies in addressing business-related human rights challenges.

Not meeting the responsibility to respect human rights can (and increasingly does) give rise to a range of legal, reputational, financial and operational risks for companies.

The UNGPs are pragmatic, but creativity and effort are expected. The principles set a challenging standard for companies, but recognise that companies need to find practical ways to implement respect for human rights.

Importantly, a company's responsibility to respect human rights extends beyond its own activities and first tier suppliers. Companies can be (and often are) involved in impacts far removed from their own activities via their business relationships. In these situations, stakeholders and the UNGPs expect the company to do something, even it can't solve the problem alone. For more, see Using Leverage.

See the UNGPs and The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights: An Interpretive Guide for more.


WHY WERE THE UNGPS DEVELOPED?
THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE UN GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Insights from business practice

  • There’s no right way to start – focus on what will work in your company

    There are many ways to get started – what matters is taking that first step.

    For some companies, developing a policy commitment or aspirational statement is an important first step. It sets the direction and helps communicate ‘tone from the top’ to get things moving. Other companies will begin by building a stronger understanding of their human rights risks – focusing on their products or operations, the regions where they operate and risks common in their industry or value chain. Some companies will start with a broad focus on all human rights issues. Others may begin by focusing on a few issues, such as community impacts or modern slavery, and then look more comprehensively at all human rights once they’ve developed confidence.

    And some companies find they need to start quickly, working rapidly to address human rights-related issues stemming from a crisis situation. Whilst no company wants to be involved in a situation where there are widespread or severe human rights impacts, these situations can present powerful opportunities to shift the conversation internally and drive efforts to embed respect for human rights.   

  • Develop a clear business case to support stronger human rights risk management

    Having a strong business case, and being able to communicate clearly why implementing respect for human rights will be good for the business, will help you engage more effectively with colleagues. The connection between human rights and business is not always intuitive, and you may need to build awareness with your colleagues and managers. A good business case can help.

    The increase in mandatory human rights due diligence requirements and other regulatory requirements in recent years has certainly resulted in an increased focus for business.

    What a good business case looks like will depend on your company and its operating context and culture. Some business practitioners find it helpful to recognise that human rights risks to people often go hand-in-hand with risks to the business, which can include legal, financial and reputational risks. In addition to focusing on risks and compliance, discussing value creation – how managing human rights issues effectively will create value for the business – can also be effective. For example, with many brands increasingly working to drive human rights standards across their value chains, being able to demonstrate that a company takes human rights seriously and is implementing effective policies and processes can help consolidate customer and other business relationships, and attract new staff.

    Think creatively about how to communicate the business case. One-to-one conversations as well as internal group training and presentations can help get the message to the right people in the right ways.

  • Make human rights feel clear and relevant to colleagues

    Use language that will resonate with your colleagues – and help these issues feel relevant to their day-to-day work.

    Human rights concepts and terms will not always be immediately understood, and may even irritate some managers who don't immediately see the business relevance. Some practitioners find it helpful to translate human rights terms into more practical operational language – for example, by talking about passport retention, discrimination, safety or privacy. It is also important to understand the cultural context before deciding on the choice of language and approach. Other practitioners find it helpful to introduce the language of human rights, drawing on the universality of these terms to promote consistency across the business. The best choice is likely to be the one that works well for your colleagues.

    Case studies and scenarios can help make human rights relevant and bring the company’s human rights responsibilities to life. These are particularly effective when drawn from the company’s own experiences, or those of its peers. They can help bring the risk home.

    For more, see: Raising Awareness, Training and Capacity Building

  • Engage with peers, experts and other stakeholders – don’t reinvent the wheel

    For those getting started, there is a lot of support and guidance available.

    You’re not alone and, whatever your company's industry or operating context, there will be others who’ve been in a similar situation. Industry groups and peer networks can provide valuable sources of support. Talk to peers about how they got started, what approaches they’ve found effective and how they achieved traction with colleagues and senior leaders. External experts and other stakeholders can also be great sources of advice – particularly as you build know-how on what the UNGPs mean for your company. Many companies also find it helpful to test their approach with key stakeholders, and get input to strengthen their work.

    Importantly, find out what policies and processes your company already has in place. Even if they don’t use the term ‘human rights’, existing workplace policies, risk management processes and hotlines can provide a good foundation to build on. By integrating human rights into existing systems, you can streamline the work and leverage what’s already been done in other parts of the business - and you can avoid creating a new system that may face pushback.

  • Start thinking about the long-term vision for your company’s human rights work

    The UNGPs will take time to implement, and you may need to start with a discrete project or pilot programme and build on that over time. However, it’s important to keep in mind your long-term ambitions – and, ultimately, stakeholders’ expectations.

    In part, this helps keep the bigger picture in mind and will support you to think more strategically about short, medium and longer term goals. However, thinking about emerging trends and developments – and how these might evolve in future – will also help you position the company to meet changing stakeholder expectations as well as new legal requirements.

    Emerging laws and regulations tend to require less than the UNGPs do – for example, these laws may focus on modern slavery (rather than all human rights), or on human rights reporting (rather than also addressing due diligence and engagement with remedy). However, as business uptake grows over time, we can expect that the legal and regulatory requirements will evolve too. The UNGPs have been a key reference point for law-makers in the UK, Europe, the US, Australia and other regions, and guidance materials accompanying laws such as the UK Modern Slavery Act encourage companies to view compliance as part of their broader efforts to implement the UNGPs.

    For more on the changing regulatory landscape, see: Business and Human Rights: Navigating the Changing Legal Landscape


ARE HUMAN RIGHTS A FAMILIAR CONCEPT?
HOW TO TALK ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES

Looking forward: Getting companies off to a good start

Awareness of companies’ human rights responsibilities is growing – as are expectations that companies will meet these responsibilities. This growth in awareness and expectations is driving more companies to get started on their implementation of respect for human rights. 

We see a number of opportunities to support companies’ efforts to get started and accelerate their human rights programmes. These include:

  1. Boosting access to business practice and experiences: There’s a limit to how far and how fast companies can progress by acting alone. To speed up change, we need to improve practitioners’ access to each other’s practical approaches, insights and tips. By supporting business practitioners to work together, strategies can be developed that build on accumulated know-how and avoid re-inventing the wheel.

  2. Ensuring continued focus on respect for human rights as set out in the UNGPs: The UNGPs are ambitious. They ask companies to think deeply and comprehensively about the human rights risks of their activities and business relationships, and to implement ongoing processes to manage issues over time. Some companies will find focusing more narrowly – for example, on a region or an issue – to be a more practical starting point. As more companies begin this journey, it will be important to ensure that an initial focus on one or a small number of focus areas expands over time as the company’s human rights programme matures.

  3. Protecting the safe place for companies to learn by doing: Regulatory tools are increasingly being used to encourage companies to manage their human rights issues – and are changing the legal risks faced by companies that cannot demonstrate they are doing this effectively. This is valid and, if designed well, can be helpful to companies serious about respecting human rights. However, there is no one-size-fits all approach to implementing respect for human rights, and each company will need to develop its own approach through trial and error. It's important that we maintain a safe place for companies to learn about what works and to share their experiences.