How can you overcome human rights due diligence challenges?

1 Assess your context and risks

Before you start your HRDD process, you need to understand your business context and the potential human rights risks and opportunities associated with your operations, products, services and relationships. This means conducting a comprehensive and credible assessment of the legal, social, environmental and political factors that may affect your human rights performance and obligations. You also need to identify the most salient human rights issues for your sector and stakeholders, and prioritize them according to their severity, likelihood and remediation potential.

2 Engage with stakeholders

Stakeholder engagement is essential for HRDD, as it helps you to gain insights, feedback, trust and legitimacy from the people who are affected by or interested in your human rights impacts. Stakeholders can include employees, customers, suppliers, investors, regulators, civil society, communities and rights holders. You need to engage with them in a meaningful, transparent and inclusive way, and respect their views and expectations. You also need to establish mechanisms for dialogue, consultation, grievance and remedy, and address any concerns or complaints promptly and effectively.

3 Integrate and act

Once you have assessed your context and risks and engaged with stakeholders, you need to integrate your findings and recommendations into your business policies, strategies, processes and practices. This means embedding human rights considerations into your governance, risk management, decision making, procurement, product development, marketing and communication. You also need to take concrete actions to prevent, mitigate or remedy any adverse human rights impacts that you cause, contribute to or are directly linked to. You need to allocate sufficient resources, responsibilities and accountability for your HRDD actions, and monitor and evaluate their outcomes and impacts.

4 Communicate and report

Communication and reporting are crucial for HRDD, as they demonstrate your commitment, progress and performance on human rights to your internal and external stakeholders. You need to communicate and report on your HRDD process, actions, results and challenges in a clear, concise and consistent manner, using appropriate channels and formats. You need to align your communication and reporting with relevant standards and frameworks, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Global Reporting Initiative and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. You also need to seek feedback and input from your stakeholders on your communication and reporting, and use it to improve your HRDD practice.

5 Learn and improve

HRDD is not a one-off exercise, but a continuous and dynamic process that requires constant learning and improvement. You need to review and update your HRDD process, actions, results and challenges regularly, and identify the gaps, strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. You also need to learn from your own and others' experiences, best practices, challenges and innovations on HRDD, and apply them to your own context and circumstances. You need to foster a culture of learning and improvement within your organization, and encourage collaboration and exchange with your peers, partners and stakeholders on HRDD.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?