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Sustainability FAQs | Tuesday November 1, 2022
Human Rights Assessment
This FAQ sets out the BSR perspective on human rights assessments. We believe that identifying and prioritizing the actual and potential human rights impacts with which a company may be involved is a first critical step in avoiding, preventing, and mitigating harm to people associated with business activity.
Sustainability FAQs | Tuesday November 1, 2022
Human Rights Assessment
Preview
BSR's perspectives on human rights assessments.
Defining Human Rights Assessment
What is a human rights assessment?
A human rights assessment identifies and prioritizes actual and potential adverse human rights impactsand makes recommendations for appropriate action to address those impacts.A human rights assessment can take many forms, buthas the following key features:
- All Human Rights: A review against all internationally recognizedhuman rights as a reference point since companies maypotentially impactvirtually any of these rights.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Meaningful consultation with potentially affected groups,other relevant stakeholders, and credible independent experts.
- Vulnerable Groups: Identifying whoserights may be adversely impacted, paying special attention to any particular human rights impacts on individuals from groups or populations that may be at heightened risk of vulnerability or marginalization.
- Appropriate Action: Identifying appropriate action to avoid, prevent, mitigate, or remedy actual and potential adverse human rights impacts.
A human rights assessmentidentifies and prioritizesrisks to people (i.e., risks to rightsholders) rather than risks to the business (i.e., risks to enterprise value creation).
When should human rights assessments be undertaken?
Human rights assessments can be undertaken in many different circumstances, such as prior to a new activity or business relationship, prior to major decisions or changes in the operation (e.g., market entry or exit, product launch, or policy change), and / or in response to or anticipation of changes in the operating environment (e.g., rising social tensions).
Human rights assessments can be corporate wide, location based (e.g., country, site), upstream (i.e., supply chain), downstream (i.e., product use), policy oriented (e.g., social media platforms), issue specific (e.g., land rights), or time bound (e.g., reviewing a crisis response). Human rights assessments can also be company specific or sector wide.
How long do human rights assessments take?
In BSR’s experience the length of human rights assessments can vary from less than one week (e.g., prior to an urgent business decision or in reaction to a sudden unexpected events) to two years or more (e.g., prior to a major new product launch or technology innovation). Our standard human rights assessment typically takes 4-6 months.
Is engagement with affected stakeholders a requirement for human rights assessment?
A human rights assessment typically involves meaningful consultation with potentially affected stakeholders, and / or engagement with independent experts, human rights defenders, and civil society organizations. Occasionally engagement with stakeholders is not possible (for example, when an assessment informs an urgent or unanticipated business decision), and here companies should draw upon insights gained from prior stakeholder engagement.
BSR is an independent expert on human rights, and we bring insights from our stakeholder relationships to every engagement; however, effective human rights assessment does require meaningful stakeholder engagement.
Is a human rights assessment the same as human rights due diligence?
No, a human rights assessment is only one part of human rights due diligence. According to the UNGPs, human rights due diligence has four elements:
- Assessment: Assessing actual or potential adverse human rights impacts with which the company may be involved.
- Action: Taking appropriate action to avoid, prevent, mitigate, and / or remedy actual or potential adverse human rights impacts identified in assessments.
- Tracking: Tracking the effectiveness of the company’s response to human right impacts, including via qualitative and / or quantitative indicators and feedback from stakeholders.
- Communications: Communicating externally in a form and frequency such that the company’s approach can be effectively evaluated.
What is a human rights salience assessment?
- Scale: How grave is the impact?
- Scope: How widespread is the impact?
- Remediability: Is it possible to counteract or make good the resulting harm?
- Likelihood: What is the chance of the impact happening?
A salience assessment typically ends with the identification of “salient human rights issues” and does not consider appropriate action to address these impacts.
A human rights salience assessment is one type of human rights assessment. A human rights salience assessment is typically companywide (rather than a specific country, product, or function) and prioritizes actual and potential adverse human rights impacts according to the following criteria:
What is a human rights impact assessment?
A human rights impact assessment is one type of human rights assessment. A human rights impact assessment typically involves more in-depth consultation with affected stakeholders than other forms of human rights assessment, and for this reason is often focused on specific locations or communities.
A human rights impact assessment can provide an in-depth foundation for more nimble, timely, and reactive human rights assessments as circumstances change over time.
Other Assessment Types
What is the difference between human rights and civil rights? What is the difference between a human rights assessment and a civil rights assessment?
Human rights are rights we have simply because we exist as human beings and arenot granted by any state or government. Human rights are inherent to us all, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, sexuality, or any other status. By contrast, civil rights arelegal protections granted by governments to their citizens, typically through a national constitution or other laws.
For this reason, a human rights assessment will reviewimpacts against all internationally recognized human rights as a reference point, whereas a civil rights assessment will review impacts against the relevant local legal protections.
While human rights assessments and civil rights assessments aretypically pursued separately (especially in the United States), we believe there are opportunities for significant synergies.
What is the difference between human rights and ethics? What is the difference between a human rights assessment and an ethics assessment?
Human rights assessments are focused one stablished rights that should always be protected and respected, internationally recognized laws and standards, and a universally endorsed framework for defining company responsibility.
By contrast, ethics assessments are useful for decision‑making in situations where right/ wrongand good/bad are not clearly defined, where different pathways of action canreasonablybe chosen, and to address issues of fairness and social justicewhere different schools of thought and ethicalstandards exist.
While human rights assessments and ethics assessments aretypically pursued separately,we believe there are opportunities for significant synergies. A human‑rights‑based approach provides a universal foundation upon which various ethical frameworks, choices and judgments can be applied.
What is the difference between a human rights salience assessment and a materiality assessment?
Historically there have been two important differences between materiality and salience: (1) materiality is about disclosure, while salience is about management; (2) materiality covers all issues, whereas salience has been limited to human rights impacts. However, two significant developments are bringing the concepts of salience and materiality closer together.
First, the 2021 iteration of the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards adopted a revised definition of materiality that incorporates the scope, scale, irremediable character, and likelihood definitions that underpin the concept of salience and the UNGPs.
Second, the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) that specify disclosure requirements under the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive also propose a definition of impact materiality based on the concept of salience and the UNGPs (i.e., scope, scale, remediability, likelihood).
In short, the concept of salience is being utilized for disclosure (not just management) and for a comprehensive range of economic, environmental, and social issues (not just human rights). BSR welcomes these developments as enhancing conceptual clarity and generating synergy across previously siloed assessments.
Can a salience assessment be combined with a materiality assessment?
It depends. The harmonization of prioritization criteria between “salience” and “impact materiality” means that a salience assessment can be undertaken as part of a materiality assessment provided the expectations of a salienceassessment are met—for example, that impacts on all potentially relevant human rights are considered and that affected stakeholders are engaged. BSR anticipates that this combined approach may become more common over time, especially for companies where salient human rights issues make up a large portion of material matters (e.g., social media companies).
However, we also expect that many companies will choose to keep these two assessments separate, while achieving efficiency by integrating the results of a salience assessment into a materiality assessment, rather than undertaking duplicative assessments.
Can human rights be embedded in enterprise risk assessment?
Human rights assessmentcan be included within broader enterprise riskassessment and risk management systems, provided it goes beyond identifying material risks to the company and includes risks to people as well.
The emerging concepts of “double materiality” (the notion that companies should report on matters that influence enterprise value andmatters that affect wider society) and “dynamic materiality”(thenotion that therelative materiality of an issue may change over time) make it likely that the connectivity between enterprise risk assessment and human rights assessment will grow over time.
What is the difference between a human rights assessment and a human rights audit?
A human rights assessment is typically forward looking, identifies and priorities actual and potential human rights impacts, and recommends appropriate actionto address them. By contrast, a human rights audit is typically historical, determines compliance against a standard,investigates the root causes of prior harms, and recommends corrective actions.
Regulatory Requirements
Should human rights assessment berequired by law?
BSR welcomes emerging regulatory requirements that mandate human rights due diligence by companies, which we believe will accelerate urgently needed due diligence, scale best practices, and result in greater attention on human rights impacts by Boards and senior management at companies.We believe these requirements should be as consistent as possible with the UNGPs, enable effective human rights due diligence rather than “check box” approaches, and incentivize ambitious action by companies.
What are the risks associated with human rights assessment being required by law?
There is a risk that companies will seekminimalist complianceandstifle efforts aimedat more ambitious and meaningful human rights due diligence. However, the absence of consistent and structured human rights due diligence at companies today means that regulation is merited, and BSR will promote meaningful human rights due diligence as the inevitabletug of warbetween “the letter” and “the spirit” of complianceunfolds.
Technical Matters
Why is it important to determine whether a company causes, contributes to, or is directly linked to an adverse human rights impact?
Appropriate action to address adverse human rights will vary according to whether the company causes or contributes to an adverse impact, or whether it is involved solely because the impact is directly linked to its operations, products,or services by a business relationship.
Where a company causes an adverse human rights impact, it should take the necessary steps to cease or prevent the impact. Where a company contributes to an adverse human rights impact, it should take the necessary steps to cease or prevent its contribution and use its leverage to mitigate any remaining impact to the greatest extent possible. Where a company is directly linked to an adverse human rights impact,it should use leverage to prevent or mitigate the adverse impact, and consider ending the business relationship if that is not possible, taking into consideration thepotential adverse human rights impacts of doing so.
Leverage is considered to exist where the enterprise has the ability to effect change in the wrongful practices of an entity that causes a harm.
Further, where a company causes or contributes to adverse impacts it should provide for or cooperate in remediation; where a company is directly linked to an adverse impactit does not havethe responsibility to provide forremediation, though it may take a role in doing so.
Do BSR’s human rights assessments reach conclusions on whether a company causes, contributes to, or is directly linked to an adverse human rights impact?
During most human rights assessments BSR uses the questions below(among others) to assess whether a company causes, contributes to, or is directly linked to an adverse human rights impact. However, in our experience,this analysis is directional rather than specific, since the precise conclusion can vary significantly according to the particulars of a case.
- Will the company’sactions or omissions on their own be sufficient to result in the adverse impact?
- Will the company’s specific products, services, oroperations be involved in thespecificharm?
- Are the company’s due diligence efforts, including efforts to prevent or mitigate the impact, of sufficient quality?
- Will the company take actions (or fail to take actions) that facilitate or enable another entity to cause an adverse impact, where a company’s actions add to the conditions that make it possible for use of a product by a third party to cause a harm?
- Will the companytake actions (or fail to take actions) that incentivize or motivate another entity to cause an adverse impact, where a company’s actions make it more likely that a product or service will be used in ways that cause harm?
Should human rights assessments be published?
According to the UNGPs, companies should publish sufficient information for their human rights approach to be effectively evaluated by stakeholders, and we believe this principle should determine the extent to which the results of human rights assessments are published.
There is often a debate about whether (1) the full human rights assessment should be published, (2) a summary of the assessment should be published, or (3) nothing about the assessment should be published. In our experience the following criteria can help inform a decision:
- Publish in Full: Full disclosure is “decision useful” for external stakeholders and would increase the quality of their work, such as by providing information or analysis they otherwise would not have; full disclosure makes contribution to the broader field; full disclosure would assist the company to avoid, prevent, mitigate, or remedy harm.
- Publish a Summary: Significant parts of the assessment should not be disclosed because of internal and/or external stakeholder safety and security, commercial confidentiality, and / or legal prohibitions.
- Don’t Publish: All of the assessment should not be disclosed because of internal and/or external stakeholder safety and security, commercial confidentiality, and / or legal prohibitions; publication of the assessment itself may have an adverse impact on human rights (e.g., increase tension in conflict affected areas, increased scrutiny by a bad actor or government); human rights risks can be effectively addressed without publication; the assessment is not material to stakeholders and would detract from other disclosures.
People
Helle Bank Jorgensen
Blog | Monday October 31, 2022
Scenarios Reveal the Urgency of Climate Action for the Food, Beverage, and Agriculture Sector
Explore three future climate scenarios for the food, beverage, and agriculture sector, intended to help companies consider dynamic macro forces in climate plans.
Blog | Monday October 31, 2022
Scenarios Reveal the Urgency of Climate Action for the Food, Beverage, and Agriculture Sector
Preview
Land use, crop production, and the respective food, beverage, and agricultural markets are inextricably linked to climate and will be shaped by rising global temperatures and our response to changing weather patterns.
Events of the last decade have already provided a taster of what we can expect. Chronic weather changes (e.g., altered precipitation patterns) and acute weather events (e.g., severe droughts, floods, and tropical cyclones) will significantly impact agricultural systems. From shifting production zones and reduced yields and nutritional quality of crops, to negative outcomes on farmer livelihoods and well-being, there are serious implications for the food, beverage, and agriculture sector.
Population Exposed to Crop Failures in Africa
We know that changes to our climate will intensify, bringing environmental, social, and economic turmoil for the global food system. Some of these anticipated impacts will come into effect regardless of future action, as they are linked to greenhouse gases that are already emitted into our atmosphere.
What we don’t know is how society will react in addressing the climate crisis—and thus the severity of its impacts—and how developments in areas such as geopolitics and technology will unfold in the coming decades.
To help companies navigate uncertain futures and consider dynamic macro forces in their climate plans, BSR has developed three future scenarios for the food, beverage and agriculture sector. Below, we share the most salient insights across scenarios, which reinforce the urgency of climate action for business in this sector.
The physical impacts of climate change are relatively certain up to 2035. Beyond this, our action will dictate severity and intensity.
Regardless of action taken to reduce GHG emissions, the physical impacts of climate change are expected to intensify up to 2035. Beyond this, the intensity and frequency of disruptive weather events will be dictated by the speed and ambition of climate action this decade.
Delayed or insufficient action will further increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, leading to reduced crop yields and supply chain disruptions that affect access to raw commodities and derived goods.
If we take no further climate action beyond current policies, physical climate impacts in 2050 would lead to global cereal yields that are 15 percent lower than in scenarios where further action is taken. Failing to prepare for such disruptions will likely expose business to greater supply risk and commodity price volatility. The sector will have to build resilience to the expected physical impacts, while working to rapidly achieve net-zero emissions to avoid further catastrophic outcomes.
Soil Moisture in the United States
Physical impacts, growth in bioenergy demand, and a greater reliance on land-based carbon sequestration will add pressure on land resources.
On the other hand, rapid and coordinated global climate action may put land resources under greater pressure. Changing weather patterns and demand for both bioenergy and land-based carbon removal will accelerate competition for land resources.
In a scenario where we take early and coordinated action to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century, forested lands would grow by 160 million hectares by 2030, and 15 percent of primary energy would come from biofuels in the same year.
This would require that land—which may already be disputed or under pressure—is used for reforestation, afforestation, and the production of bioenergy crops. If this scenario was to unfold, businesses may be expected to have greater visibility of their supply chains, source materials from regions that are less environmentally vulnerable or free from land disputes and play a central role in driving innovation in agriculture and food and beverage production.
As we target net-zero emissions by 2050, a delay in climate action will leave companies exposed to greater transition risks.
Delayed action would require hasty and draconian approaches to reduce emissions and avert the worst physical impacts. This response could include high carbon taxes and unanticipated legal mandates requiring business to abruptly decarbonize, posing challenges to the food, beverage, and agriculture sector, which tends to have significant value chain and land use emissions.
This precipitated regulatory response would expose companies to high costs for abating emissions, including those linked to rapid deployment of renewable energy, and reliance on low-carbon agriculture technologies that may not deliver the emissions reductions needed or struggle to scale.
Climate scenarios can help food, beverage, and agriculture companies test the resilience of business strategies against plausible futures.
Building climate resilience in the food, beverage, and agriculture sector will require understanding these complex dynamics, preparing for a wide range of plausible futures, and building a strategy that won’t be derailed by any of these futures. Climate scenarios, which highlight sector-specific implications, can be used by business to assess the resilience of sourcing strategies, uncover the vulnerability of key supply chains, and identify climate-related risks and opportunities.
BSR has 30 years of experience working with food, beverage, and agriculture companies on risk assessment and supply chain sustainability. With the launch of this new set of scenarios, we look forward to exploring the implications of plausible future developments related to climate change.
Want to know more about BSR’s FBA Climate Scenarios?
Contact us for a 1:1 briefing on the scenarios, or a 1-hour interactive taster workshop with other industry peers, to see how you can use these scenarios in practice.
Blog | Wednesday October 26, 2022
Social Unrest: Fixing the “S” of ESG in Private Equity
The ESG field is facing increased criticism. Here’s why it’s essential for private equity firms to adopt a human rights-based approach to sustainable investing.
Blog | Wednesday October 26, 2022
Social Unrest: Fixing the “S” of ESG in Private Equity
Preview
The growth of sustainable investing and “ESG” in private equity (PE) signals important progress in the financial industry as investors begin to appreciate how sustainability creates risks and opportunities.
Yet the ESG field is now under fire—for inadequate “greenwashing” strategies or politicized accusations of “bias.” As investors navigate this conflict and seek to maximize the business and societal benefits of sustainable investing, it is imperative that they put impacts on people at the center of their approaches.
The Current State
Common approaches to ESG in PE follow a formula: firms identify material risks to business based on a limited set of pre-determined criteria. If they go ahead with an investment, they encourage portfolio companies to address gaps. There are advantages to this formula, as it fits neatly within a “traditional” understanding of fiduciary duty and is relatively easy to scale.
Yet this formula is not producing adequate results for investors or society. For investors, social issue assessments are often simplistic, “check the box,” murky, and of limited value. These checklists reduce complex issues to simplistic criteria (e.g., having a modern slavery statement or DEI statistics), missing the broader business risks related to the intersection of governance, business models, business relationships and, crucially, real-world impacts of business on people.
Even when an investor looks to address identified risks, the formula often focuses on reducing the financial risk (e.g., by having compliance policies) rather than on the root cause of risk to people (e.g., lack of familiarity with human rights standards, limited engagement with potentially affected people, or regulatory gaps).
For society, the result is often companies that check the right ESG boxes but still have a pernicious effect on workers, communities, customers, and others.
Shifting to a Human Rights-Based Approach
To address these shortcomings, PE firms can strengthen their ESG efforts by adopting a human rights-based approach in alignment with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).
Endorsed by governments in the UN Human Rights Council, the UNGPs offer PE firms a process-based roadmap to respect internationally recognized human rights as a part of core business. This means conducting human rights due diligence to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how firms and their portfolio companies address risks to people (not just business).
Adopting a human rights approach helps PE firms to:
- Identify social risks and opportunities. Investors should ask tough questions: how do a company’s business model, products and services, and relationships impact people? These questions highlight real-world risks far better than generic questions about policies. For example, an investor recently lamented that using an ESG checklist for software companies was meaningless. The checklist might treat a company that makes accounting software the same as one that surveils employees. By focusing on harms to people, the firm would be better able to distinguish among companies, technologies, and end-use impacts.
- Anticipate legal risks. Investors consider proximate regulatory and legal risks to a business. By assessing the full range of a business’ harm to people, investors can anticipate and avoid the harms that lead civil society and communities to advocate for regulatory and legal action. For example, a 15-minute delivery service may have ESG policies, but its business model relies on precarious working conditions and increases congestion and traffic accidents, leading workers to strike and city officials to consider strict regulations.
- Align with emerging human rights regulations. Governments are adopting policies that reflect the expectations set out by the UNGPs. The proposed European Due Diligence directive will create a de facto Board-level obligation for companies to conduct human rights due diligence to address risks to people. The EU’s movement to “double” or “impact-based” materiality is also grounded in the human rights-based approach. Meanwhile, the US Government is updating its National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct to promote uptake of the UNGPs.
- Get ahead of geopolitical risk. Investors should consider human rights risks—especially severe civil and political rights risks—as an early warning system for geopolitical risk. For example, many investors were shocked by the economic withdrawal from Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. Going forward, they should consider, “How should we conduct business in countries where the government systematically violates human rights?”
- Respond to social harms and crises. A human rights approach offers principled and pragmatic guidance that helps companies navigate and respond to broader societal challenges and crises, such as the widespread assault on trans people’s rights across US state legislatures.
Actions for Private Equity
Investors in other asset classes have realized the value of a human rights approach. Investors representing US$7 trillion in assets under management have called on companies to conduct human rights due diligence, while others have called on governments to mandate such due diligence. Human rights are also a focus for the PRI.
To begin integrating human rights into their investment strategies, private equity firms should:
- Build capacity on human rights throughout the firm. Starting with sustainable investing leads and proliferating to portfolio managers and investment teams, firms should understand human rights standards and frameworks.
- Assess current portfolio companies and investment practices. Firms should identify existing or potential adverse human rights impacts before investing and on an ongoing basis once invested and develop plans to address them.
- Develop a go-forward plan for systematic integration of human rights into ESG approaches. Firms should include a human rights lens into investment themes, ESG policies, diligence, portfolio stewardship, etc.
BSR looks forward to building on its decades of work with companies on human rights to help private equity firms use rights-based approaches to build the next generation of sustainable investing.
Blog | Thursday October 20, 2022
Building Competent Boards: ESG Not about “Skills-Washing”
Boards need to understand emerging ESG issues and make informed decisions. Helle Bank Jorgensen, CEO and Founder of Competent Boards, discusses board training and evolution.
Blog | Thursday October 20, 2022
Building Competent Boards: ESG Not about “Skills-Washing”
Preview
In July 2022, I had the pleasure of interviewing Helle Bank Jorgensen, CEO and Founder of Competent Boards at BSR’s Future of Reporting Workshop. Helle and I previously spent a few years as advisory board members to Ethical Corp (now Reuters Sustainability) when she invited me to join her Competent Boards program during a Responsible Business awards ceremony in London in 2019.
Some years later, as part of our BSR Future of Reporting workshop on Boards and Regulation this past July, Helle shared with our 70+ members her experience since the founding of Competent Boards in 2019, with insights on who is seeking board training, what type of training, and what’s next for the evolution of boards.
Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:
- ESG training is not about “skills-washing”—boards now have a duty of care in the new regulatory environment.
- Where previously curious board directors sought training upon recognizing a skills gap, we’re now seeing entire company board cohorts looking to upskill on all issues across ESG.
- “Luck favors those who come prepared.” There is a changed mindset from "why boards should care" to "how do we care about this." This means going beyond compliance to building long-term value creation
- Boards need to have the right insights and foresight for resilience in governance.
- Directors live their values—they must be stewarded and acted upon.
Helle, could you tell us more about Competent Boards?
Competent Boards provides designation and certification programs on ESG and climate for board members and senior business professionals. Boards need to be equipped with knowledge and frameworks that allow them to understand emerging ESG issues and make informed decisions that contribute to the well-being of companies and society. Competent Boards leverages the expertise of over 180 faculty members to equip boards with the knowledge and network needed to succeed.
You launched Competent Boards in 2019 at Davos with astounding success. How have profiles of those who are getting certified evolved over the years?
Before, it was just believers at a personal level who were curious or lifelong learners who joined the program. Now, it is much broader. Professionals today are recognizing their duty and acknowledging the skills gap. ESG training is not about “skills-washing." Directors joining the program want to feel confident that they have the necessary information to anticipate risks and opportunities to the business and how the company can create more value for shareholders and society at large. More and more companies today are therefore asking to work with their entire board instead of just a few individual members. This is a huge mindset shift.
What are boards finding most difficult today in terms of ESG? Is there any one aspect they are struggling with more?
Many board members and professionals today are aware of the climate challenge and need to act in this decisive decade. However, less known and explored–and yet still important in terms of duty of care and duty to act—is human rights. Boards have discovered that this is business too, strategic, often overlooked in terms of major risks, and invisible to hidden risks in supply chains and operations. In Europe, there is now the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive that changes the game and stipulates a board’s duty to act. Many boards today are not ready for this.
How are questions from board members changing?
The biggest change I’m seeing in terms of board mentality is “why boards should care” to “how can we care about this.” I recently said at a World Economic Forum meeting, “luck favors those who come prepared,” and I firmly stand by this. There is a changed mindset from compliance, to accountability, to long-term governance and value creation, versus passive oversight or delegation to other experts in the company. Boards can ensure that they have the right insights and foresight for resilience in governance, including an important baseline knowledge and understanding across E, S, HR, and G.
With today’s shifting regulatory framework and the new role of boards, what’s next?
More scrutiny from stakeholders as well as shareholders. Shareholders are getting sophisticated in their knowledge of ESG and the value drivers for the company. They’re sharp, and they ask far more targeted questions.
I also want to conclude by saying that there is a profound cultural change happening from the inside. Companies must internalize their core values, and this starts at the board level. Boards must live their values—and these values must be stewarded and acted upon. Otherwise, we’re back at where we started—“skills-washing” through ESG.
Helle, thank you for joining us and for a very provocative dialogue. Learn more about Competent Boards certification programs and BSR’s board offering.
Blog | Tuesday October 18, 2022
Building Trauma-Informed Workplaces: Recommendations for Business
Three organizations discuss their programs employing and empowering survivors of human trafficking and their efforts to create a trauma-informed workplace enabling all employees to thrive.
Blog | Tuesday October 18, 2022
Building Trauma-Informed Workplaces: Recommendations for Business
Preview
Modern slavery and human trafficking is on the rise. While the public and private sectors have largely focused on preventing and mitigating these risks, more can be done to address the root causes of labor exploitation.
Safe, sustainable employment is one of the most effective ways to support survivors in securing their livelihood. The private sector is uniquely positioned to provide vocational training, skills and confidence coaching, and entry-level jobs for survivors who seek financial stability.
The Global Business Coalition Against Human Trafficking (GBCAT) recently sat down with three organizations to learn about their programs to employ and empower survivors of human trafficking and their efforts to implement a trauma-informed workplace that enables all employees to thrive. We discussed how they had got started with survivor employment and empowerment, key challenges of adopting a trauma-informed approach, and lessons learned for business.
Here we share some key findings from these conversations to help more businesses implement their own trauma-informed practice.
Three Businesses Employing Survivors of Human Trafficking
While still too few and far between, a variety of organizations are showing leadership in employing survivors of human trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Our case studies highlight three successful examples:
- The Market Project, a US-based nonprofit organization which builds businesses that offer stable work to survivors, launched Nguvu Dairy, a yogurt company in northern Uganda. They have employed hundreds of men and women, most of whom have experienced high levels of trauma. See the full conversation here.
- Marriott International and GFEMS, a global hospitality company and an international fund working to end modern slavery, have created the Future in Training (FIT) Hospitality curriculum. FIT provides training and resources in the hospitality industry and supports survivors in navigating career paths. See the full conversation here.
- Outland Denim, an Australian denim company, currently employs over 50 survivors of human trafficking and other forms of exploitation in Cambodia. Outland Denim has a holistic philosophy to employment, which includes a two-year training program, paying a living wage, and additional educational and professional development opportunities. See the full conversation here.
Three Key Takeaways for Business
1. Trauma-Informed Approaches Benefit Everyone
Poverty and a lack of economic opportunity are key drivers of human trafficking and other forms of exploitation. When individuals are not financially secure, they are more vulnerable to deceptive recruitment or employment practices.
Access to safe and stable employment not only reduces survivors’ own risk of exploitation but also that of dependents, like children or young adults. Three-quarters of employees at Outland Denim expressed feeling a reduced level of risk to exploitation after just six months of employment.
Moreover, education, vocational training, and other resources can benefit entire communities. 98 percent of surveyed employees at Outland Denim noted that they share the education provided by the company—such as personal finances—with their families and communities, extending their reach and impact.
All employees can benefit from a trauma-informed approach, which helps to build trust and employee motivation, strengthen relationships, and emphasizes diversity, equity, and inclusion.
2. Importance of a Long-Term Approach to Partnerships
Business cannot start out alone when building a survivor empowerment program. They should partner with immediate needs providers and vocational training organizations to help identify survivors as well as assess whether they are ready for employment and provide critical support services, like healthcare and legal aid.
Partnership should not stop once a survivor has been hired; business can continue to seek support of expert NGOs in the initial stages of the employment journey.
Marriott and GFEMS have worked together to develop the FIT curriculum and to address barriers—including transportation, childcare, and financial assistance—that would prevent survivors from accessing the curriculum.
3. Iterative Learning Supports Progress
The relative infancy of most survivor empowerment and employment programs—and the complexity of challenges faced—make monitoring, evaluation, and iterative learning core to their success. Each organization and program have developed a monitoring and evaluation framework. Incorporating the feedback of survivors is another integral element.
The Market Project conducts semi-annual impact evaluation surveys at Nguvu Dairy to assess and refine the company’s approach to survivor employment. The survey provides critical site-level information about employee experiences, feedback on how managers are implementing a trauma-informed workplace, and indications of employees who, save for the job, would be at potential risk of exploitation.
Business Benefits
Many workers have experienced varying degrees of trauma. Some may be survivors of modern slavery, while others may be survivors of domestic violence, drug or alcohol addiction, conflict, or war. An organization that acknowledges and respects the needs of trauma survivors and fosters an environment in which they feel safe, supported, and empowered will find that these benefits create a better place to work for everyone.
Conversely, introducing survivors of modern slavery into a business that has not adopted a trauma-informed management style may inadvertently risk retraumatizing survivors by exposing them to power dynamics that mirror past experiences.
GBCAT is proud to share the experiences of Marriott International, Outland Denim, and the Market Project, showing how companies that update their practices and policies to be trauma-informed can create an environment that is safe for all.
These three case studies accompany GBCAT’s Business Guide on Empowerment and Employment of Survivors of Human Trafficking and the newly released virtual Trauma-Informed Company Training, developed in partnership with Futures Without Violence, which provides additional guidance for business on how to design and establish a trauma-informed workplace. For more information on GBCAT and how to become a member, reach out to the team.
Blog | Thursday October 13, 2022
Tech Against Trafficking: Leveraging Innovation to Tackle Modern Slavery
Explore key takeaways on leveraging technology to combat human trafficking.
Blog | Thursday October 13, 2022
Tech Against Trafficking: Leveraging Innovation to Tackle Modern Slavery
Preview
On September 27-28, Amazon and BSR hosted the first Tech Against Trafficking Summit in Seattle, Washington, USA. The summit brought together over 160 leaders from the anti-trafficking field, including businesses, survivors and activists, governments, investors, and civil society, to expand opportunities for collaboration and accelerate the impact of innovative technology solutions addressing human trafficking.
Throughout the summit, 10 organizations presented their innovative technology tools that help combat different forms of human trafficking: Polaris, Diginex, Winrock, Stop the Traffik, Pacific Links Foundation, Fundación Pasos Libres, Altana AI, Commit Global, Trilateral Research, and Quizzr. In addition to these organizations, TAT members provided examples of how their companies are supporting anti-trafficking efforts and preventing the misuse of their platforms.
Here are some key takeaways from the summit, which will inform the agenda in leveraging technology to combat human trafficking:
- We need to address the barriers that prevent effective deployment of technology. First, technology development is often siloed, and there is not enough dissemination across actors, which limits impact and leads to duplicated efforts. Second, technology is often developed in the global North, without sufficient awareness of the local context in which the solutions will be deployed. Finally, current financing models don’t address the needs of the field. Technology investments are seen as “overhead” costs for most civil society organizations, and anti-trafficking organizations struggle to find long-term funding to scale their efforts.
- It is critical that technologies are built with a survivor-first and trauma-informed approach. Most technology and anti-trafficking efforts today are led by professionals, not by survivors. Speakers at the summit repeatedly highlighted that technology development efforts should focus primarily on empowering survivors. For example, participatory technology tools that provide agency to impacted individuals have the potential to break existing power dynamics. When using and managing anti-trafficking data, we should not oversee the fact that data is about individuals’ lives and experiences. Similarly, funders should focus on supporting survivor-led organizations.
"How can we make data work for survivors of trafficking? We should leverage technology, but we should also leverage the experience of people who have been in it.”
Suamhirs Piraino-Guzman, Head of Programs, Survivor Alliance
- Data privacy is a concern, but privacy-preserving methods may offer a solution. Data privacy concerns underscored much of the discussion, as privacy often means safety for those impacted by human trafficking. These concerns often limit data sharing across organizations. However, privacy-preserving mechanisms such as synthetic datasets may offer a solution. TAT’s work in previous years has helped make this technology more accessible to the anti-trafficking community.
- Technology is not a silver bullet; it must be complemented with policies and due diligence measures. Although the main theme of the summit was technology and innovation, most of the conversations focused on other factors that are crucial to make technology fully operational. Technology tools alone are not sufficient in addressing the crime; they must be complemented with policies and other due diligence measures for effective deployment and to ensure that technology tools themselves are not contributing to additional harms.
“Partnership has to be the core of everything we do, because of the intersection of this work with so many other important human rights that we need to address.”
Amy Rahe, Managing Director of Strategic Partnerships, Freedom Fund
- Cross-sector collaboration is vital to deploy innovation effectively. Addressing human trafficking and modern slavery requires a variety of skills and expertise, from criminal justice experts to service providers and technologists. Without input from companies, civil society, those with lived experience, and meaningful cooperation with governments, efforts to scale effective technology solutions risk to go overlooked.
“We see the momentum and urgency of doing more to develop and enforce policies and tools to address human trafficking. Now is the time to come together to collaborate on these important issues. There is strength in our collective and respective expertise, wisdom, and work.”
Dr. Kari Johnstone, Acting Director and Principal Deputy Director of the United States Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
To continue facilitating collaboration in the anti-trafficking field, TAT kicked off the third round of the Tech Against Trafficking Accelerator at the summit. Throughout the next 12 months, TAT members and partners will work with Polaris’ Nonechka program and the Issara Institute to help accelerate the scale and impact of their technology solutions.
We’re excited to build on this momentum and continue efforts to collectively tackle modern slavery. All companies and anti-trafficking organizations are invited to contact us to find out how to get involved.
Blog | Wednesday October 12, 2022
The Supply Chain Risk You Didn’t Know About: Navigating Responsible Sourcing in AI
Explore how companies can act to begin assessing potential labor risk, a growing urgent issue, in their AI supply chains.
Blog | Wednesday October 12, 2022
The Supply Chain Risk You Didn’t Know About: Navigating Responsible Sourcing in AI
Preview
Every Company Is a Technology Company
It’s no secret that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming business, and it’s doing so well beyond the boundaries of traditional technology sector companies. Five years ago, 71 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs agreed that “these days, their company is a tech company,” and 81 percent identified AI and Machine Learning (ML) as an “important” technology for investment.
This trend has only grown, with corporate AI adoption further accelerated by the pandemic and more companies utilizing AI beyond the enablement of efficient business processes to fuel the creation of new business models, products, and services.
While the proliferation of AI creates significant opportunity for business and society, it also surfaces several social justice and human rights issues, which includes an often-overlooked but significant labor risk in the AI supply chain.
Protecting the Rights of the Invisible Workforce
Considering that AI often replaces and nearly always transforms tasks previously performed by humans, it’s often assumed that labor risks may be reduced or eliminated. However, Machine Learning (ML) depends on a large workforce performing essential tasks of data enrichment—including cleaning, labeling, and moderating the vast troves of unstructured data—that make ML and the plethora of products and services it enables technically and commercially viable.
While crucial to AI/ML development processes, data enrichment workers are an invisible workforce, most often crowdsourced via third-party platforms and contracted with few to no labor protections. They are likely to earn subminimum wages due to typical risks and costs of employment outsourced to the individual, and little to no ability to file a complaint and access the right support.
Regulatory and private-sector approaches—where they exist—are insufficient, geographically disparate, and haven’t kept pace with the rate at which the sector is expanding globally. While failure to pay closer attention to this growing workforce and their precarious work conditions could become the next big supply chain emergency, thoughtful and collaborative approaches can protect and even promote human rights for data enrichment workers.
Taking Individual Corporate Action
Recently, BSR and Partnership on AI (PAI) joined forces to identify opportunities for industry and sector collaboration on responsible sourcing for data enrichment.
Our key findings indicate that individual corporate awareness and good practice are still nascent and require action in the near term to establish a foundation for shared learning and ultimately scale up to effective collaborative efforts in the future.
Here are key steps companies can take to assess and address potential issues through individual action:
- Raise internal awareness. Human rights and responsible sourcing professionals should understand if and how their company sources data enrichment services. Engage with technologists in relevant business units and product teams to understand processes for sourcing enriched data, including whether teams are sourcing directly via platforms or through vendors. Determine risk and identify steps that may need to be taken in line with existing human rights and responsible sourcing approaches.
- Assess existing AI sourcing partnerships. Teams that source enriched data directly via platforms can familiarize themselves with the Fairwork Cloudwork Principles and check the Cloudwork ratings to learn how these platforms are performing. Companies that source enriched data via a third party and those that source enterprise AI as a service should ask their providers how they’re managing responsible sourcing for their data enrichment and affirm that this issue is important to you as a client.
- Aim to engage and improve conditions, not retreat. Digitally distributed work has created new economic opportunities, including for many who were previously excluded from traditional work opportunities due to discrimination, caregiving responsibilities, and geographic location, among other reasons. Companies should not seek to eliminate this type of work from their supply chain, but rather engage and partner with suppliers and the sector to ensure labor rights are respected and that working conditions enable data enrichment professionals to thrive and advance in the field they help to build.
- Help decision-makers take an informed approach. Teams that develop AI/ML internally are likely to source data enrichment services to support their models. They can leverage PAI’s whitepaper on Responsible Sourcing of Data Enrichment Services to understand and inform decisions they’re making throughout the sourcing process that impact working conditions.
- Pilot responsible approaches and share learnings. Given the field’s nascent stage in formalizing responsible sourcing practices, thoughtfully planned pilots will help put existing recommendations to the test. Sharing learnings from pilots can help prove the feasibility and value of adopting responsible sourcing practices. Companies interested in demonstrating leadership in piloting approaches laid out in PAI’s paper are invited to contact PAI directly.
- Track opportunities for collective action. We know that fully addressing these labor risks at scale will require industry or sector collaboration. As we learn more about what companies are well-placed to address through piloting and individual approaches, we will also learn more about where collaboration is necessary for meaningful impact.
We invite business to bring their insights and ideas from these experiences to BSR’s Collaboration IDEAS Process, where we incubate game-changing collaborations.
Partnership on AI is a non-profit partnership of academic, civil society, industry, and media organizations creating solutions so that AI advances positive outcomes for people and society.
Blog | Thursday October 6, 2022
Inside BSR: Q&A with Cassie Collier
Inside BSR is our monthly series featuring BSR team members from around the world. Meet Cassie Collier, a Manager based in New York City.
Blog | Thursday October 6, 2022
Inside BSR: Q&A with Cassie Collier
Preview
Tell us a bit about your background. Where are you from, and where are you based? What does a day in your life look like? What is your favorite hobby?
I grew up in Central Pennsylvania and now live in New York City.
At BSR, I support financial institutions—including banks, private equity firms, and venture capital firms—in integrating sustainable business practices into their investment processes. In a world where financial systems hold significant power, I find this work incredibly pressing and important. In my free time, I am an entrepreneur! I have my own custom board game business, Bundle, with my sister.

How did you first get involved in sustainable business? How long have you been at BSR? What is your current role, and what does that entail?
When I was a college senior at Susquehanna University, the 2008 financial crisis hit. I remember watching financial news on TV—seeing executives receiving bailouts while everyday people were losing their homes. It didn’t seem right.
I packed my bags and moved to Nicaragua, where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer for two years. There, I witnessed a more ethical way of conducting business—micro-lenders that offered low-interest rates loan to new entrepreneurs, small restaurant owners that would consciously price their menu so community members could afford them, and farmers that formed co-operatives to equally share risk and profits.
When I returned from the Peace Corps, I enrolled at Harvard Kennedy School to understand how our own financial system could be repaired. My thesis analyzed Fortune 500 companies’ role—sometimes positive, sometimes negative—in upholding human rights.
After an enlightening stint at Deutsche Bank, where I learned the technical aspects of finance—but even more importantly, what motivates people, how power structures are upheld, and how groupthink affects decision making—I joined BSR.
Here, I am a Manager on our Financial Services team, working alongside large banks, private equity firms, and venture capital firms to consider how financing can be done in a way that respects people and our climate.
What are some interesting projects that you get to work on as part of your role at BSR? What do you enjoy about them?
What I really value about BSR is that we are given the agency to pursue what motivates us. About six months ago, I started to read about the housing crisis unfolding before us. In my research, I learned that housing is incredibly unaffordable due, in large part, to institutional investors rapidly buying up the housing stock across places like the US, Canada, and Spain. (Learn more in this blog post I co-authored.)
With the support of BSR colleagues, I have spent the last two months having conversations with people most negatively affected by this housing crisis—including tenants, members of tenant associations, and heads of fair housing centers—to better understand the challenges and potential solutions at hand. Now, BSR colleagues and I are planning to engage private equity members on this issue.
It is a systemic challenge, and I am looking forward to mobilizing stakeholders in collective action.
What issues are you passionate about and why? How does your work at BSR reflect that?
I grew up in a small coal mining town in Pennsylvania, where there is a history of miners getting severely injured or killed due to unsafe working conditions. So, from a young age, I became passionate about how everyday workers and communities are treated by those in power.
At BSR, I get to work with mission-driven people at financial institutions who also care about the same issues. Together, we’ve worked to establish living wage policies for workers, build Net Zero carbon emissions plans, and create human rights-focused due diligence practices. One project that was particularly special was working with Allbirds and a team of advisors to develop the Sustainability Principles and Objectives (SPO) Framework, a set of climate and human rights standards for companies about to go public.
What were the things that brought you joy amid the uncertainty and challenges of the past two years? What are you looking forward to in 2022 and beyond?
There have been many blessings in the last two years. First, due to flexible remote working, I was able to spend more time with my family in Central Pennsylvania. Second, I spent a lot of time hiking and even reached the highest peak in 12 US states—and counting. Third, I got the cutest Sheltie named Frisbee—we spend time at the dog park in Central Park, which is his (and my) happy place.
Blog | Tuesday October 4, 2022
Navigating the ESG Ratings Landscape: Five Recommendations for Business
ESG ratings can often raise questions and sometimes frustration among companies. We share five common dilemmas with key recommendations for business.
Blog | Tuesday October 4, 2022
Navigating the ESG Ratings Landscape: Five Recommendations for Business
Preview
ESG in general, and more specifically ESG ratings, have been in the line of fire recently. The critics have been loud, with strong accusations of a false and flawed system.
While some critiques are justified, there is a lot of misunderstanding around ESG ratings, which continue to play an important role in benchmarking sustainability information and informing investment decisions. It is important to understand what ratings are, and equally what they are not, to avoid these misinterpretations.
With a background in the responsible investment industry, I know ratings often raise questions and sometimes frustration among companies—recent headlines risk making matters even more confusing. I’ve received numerous questions from member companies trying to figure out how the rating system works and how to engage with rating agencies.
With the right insights, companies can grasp the benefits of ESG ratings and how they can play a positive role in self-assessments, benchmarking against peers, and aligning business strategy with respect for social and environmental issues.
With this backdrop, here are five common dilemmas with key recommendations for business:
How much should I care about ratings? The short answer is—a lot. ESG ratings are now a mainstream tool in institutional investors practice, used as one of several factors to evaluate ESG performance and make buy or sell decisions. Ratings help benchmark a company against peers, identify leaders and laggards, and get a sense of the ESG landscape within a given sector. For example, they show up daily on Bloomberg terminals around the globe, and often companies are simply not in consideration for investment if they do not pass a certain barrier—so ratings are critical for issuers.
It is a jungle out there and I don’t know what to focus on. The number of questionnaires can seem overwhelming and raise concerns about how to allocate already limited resources. A first step is to find out how your critical investors are using ESG ratings, identify which issues they believe are important, and what data they are looking for. MSCI and Sustainalytics are the most frequently used rating agencies. Ensure that you are directly engaging with your investors to understand their expectations. It is advisable to monitor for presence on any investment blacklists, as this can result in exclusion from ESG products. If your rating is poor, communicate to your investors how you plan to address the issue.
I am disappointed with my rating but not sure how to contact the rater. I have heard many executives who are unhappy with their ESG scores, claiming it is based on incomplete research or a lack of contextual analysis. Reach out to the raters and build a dialogue, get feedback, and see what it takes to improve your rating. It is also in their interest to collaborate on gaps and be transparent around methodologies, so it should be a win-win. Look through the rating report shared with you—this should provide contact information for the analyst, and log in to their online platform where you can include additional information.
I have released a new report, but my rating has not improved. Ratings are updated annually, so perhaps your latest report has not been reviewed yet. A typical rating agency evaluates around 700 criteria for thousands of companies, which takes time. It is possible that the analyst simply missed information, which underlines the benefit of establishing a dialogue with the raters for verification purposes. Even when information is retrieved, many raters require this information to be made public. This is a way of pushing companies toward improved transparency and accountability.
I have just become B Corp certified/signed up to SBTi, but still have a poor rating. External certifications matter less in this context, as ratings measure how a company approaches ESG from a risk management perspective, rather than from business impact. A company can have a product with positive environmental impacts, but if it does not manage labor-related risks or corporate governance, it will never receive a good rating. If you want to improve your score, focus on implementing solid ESG management systems and report transparently on it; this will positively impact your rating at the end of the day, as a mere side-effect.
ESG ratings are not a silver bullet, but that does not mean they are not useful. They have played a key role in mainstreaming sustainable investing and educating the investor community on how sustainability issues are relevant to business. It is still a nascent industry lacking standard definitions, which is a valid part of the criticism, but it has never claimed to be an exact science. Investors are a powerful actor in the transition toward a more just and sustainable world, and ratings are an important part of their toolbox to get there.