What’s ahead for companies in the business and human rights space in 2025? 🌍🤝
1. The Goldilocks Governance: Companies are looking for that perfect governance set-up. The one that creates a robust foundation for due diligence, that brings in the right functions and fosters effective cross-functional ownership and collaboration. ⚖️✨
2. The Resource Competition: While the number of things to do in this field have rapidly risen, resources have not necessarily followed. In-house practitioners will continue to ask themselves questions on resource prioritisation: what gets funded, and what doesn’t, and how can salience (impact materiality) help us determine the right response.💰🤔
3. General Training Makes Way for Tailored Functional Expectations: Gone are the days of the general training on human rights. In are the days of what do human rights mean for specific functions in terms of actual actions to take. The focus is on more tailored trainings, bespoke checklists and specific process changes. 📚🎯
4. Taking Pilots to Scale: A number of companies have learnings from pilots with suppliers on specific human rights issues and/or in specific locations. The question is how to roll out these learnings to suppliers at scale, so we get to more breadth - without diluting quality. 📈📦
5. Qualitative Technology: Technology will play a greater role in human rights due diligence when it comes to assessment and monitoring. Companies will be looking to ensure that technology leveraged considers the specificities of human rights due diligence, and that they know when to complement technology with other more qualitative tools. 💻🔍
6. Workers and Communities as Allies: Increased attention will be paid to how to effectively gather insights, views and concerns on impacts from workers and communities in a pro-active and structured manner - in a way that provides stakeholders agency in companies’ due diligence efforts. 👥💬
7. Beyond 1-1 Action: Companies will coordinate more with peers to enable collaborative measures for those issues they are unable to resolve alone. There will be a desire to balance action companies can advance on by themselves with their suppliers, with actions they need to take with peers and other stakeholders active in the industry/ region. 🤝🌐
8. Government Accountability: Companies will ask themselves what role they need to play within an evolving political context. Forward-focused companies in the EU will ask themselves how they can ensure governments don’t backtrack on creating the enabling environment for meaningful human rights due diligence. In the U.S., they will seek to navigate the new political environment in a way that doesn’t attract scrutiny while enabling them to advance with their commitments. 🏛️🔄
9. Holistic Tracking: Companies increasingly will look at how their KPIs work together to tell a fuller and more holistic story of progress. They will clusters KPIs, refine them, and strengthen the qualitative measurements underpinning their quantitative KPIs. 📊🔗
10. Enabling Remedy: Companies will pay more attention to the concept of the ‘enabling remedy’ eco-system for those severe cumulative impacts that they are connected to for which there is no one readily available party responsible for remedy. ⚖️🛠️
11. Navigating Legal Uncertainty: Companies will need to grow more comfortable with legal uncertainty and taking actions despite a lack of exact clarity on the legal road ahead. This will entail relying more on soft law as a directional compass by which to interpret business and human rights laws and how they inter-sect. ⚖️🧭
12. The Expanded Role of Investors and Legal Experts: Investors and legal advisors will play an increasingly crucial role in supporting and incentivising companies to undertake meaningful human rights due diligence. They will play the role of monitor, coach, support and watchdog. 🕵️♂️💡
What do you think? What do you see on the cards for 2025? 🤔📅
I look forward to hearing your perspectives - and also do feel free to join our next Be Human Rights Confident Collective where we will be discussing this question as a community. 🙌🌟
See you on Zoom on Friday 31st Jan, 1 pm UK for 30 minutes - RSVP below
A particularly urgent point before then though is number eight above.
Take a look at this recent letter from over 400 companies (L’Oreal, Carrefour, Amundi, EDF, etc.) addressed to European Union commissioners: “a moratorium or rollback risks fostering a culture of delay rather than encouraging further adoption.” 📄🔍
Let me ask you: what is your company doing to show up in today’s evolving political context? If this area is new to you, feel free to reach out and I’ll put you in touch with those who are working on this day in day out who can help you. It doesn’t need a lot of time from you, and can yield significant results over the longer-term. The window of opportunity is now. You have more leverage than you think over the ongoing policy and legal discussions! 🚀🤝
I was so eager to delve into this I forgot to ask you if you had a lovely break. I truly hope you did and come back recharged and rejuvenated.
I’ve never felt more determined in my life to support meaningful business and human rights progress in a rapidly changing climate. Everything we read, see and hear supports that we are on the right side of history and that we need to significantly ramp up our efforts. I had an amazing break - I’ll tell you more about my experience with electric cars in the UK, my insights from delving into the Chartist movement, and my top picks in the Lake District another time as I’m sure you’re eager to get your teeth into some meaty reports! 🚗🌿📚
Happy New Year 2025 everyone. May the impact be with you. 💫
Anna
