The Global Business Initiative on Human Rights (GBI) published the latest briefing in its What Good Looks Like series, focusing on grievance mechanisms and remedy (October 2025). The series aims to support the development of practical mandatory due diligence laws aligned with the UNGPs and provide guidance for companies to understand what effective due diligence looks like in practice.
Human Level’s Take:
- Meaningful remedy — enabled by accessible, effective grievance mechanisms — is a crucial component of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, ensuring that affected people are treated fairly when their rights are impacted.
- Grievance mechanisms also play a crucial role in good human rights due diligence. When done well, grievances can strengthen due diligence, reduce human rights and business risks, serve as an early warning system, and help build trust between a company and its stakeholders.
- Five core considerations: (1) Maintain multiple channels for grievances, both passive (hotlines) and active (dialogue-based); (2) Use the eight effectiveness criteria of the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights (UNGPs) and see receiving grievances as a metric of success; (3) Support grievance channels with internal processes designed to ensure accountability within the business and embed learnings; (4) Consider holistic options for remediation beyond financial compensation, designed in consultation with affected people; and (5) use leverage, including with peers and governments, to ensure remedy where responsibility is shared with other actors.
Some key takeaways:
- Why grievance mechanisms and remedy matter: GBI points out that how a company handles grievances goes to the heart of respect for human rights. Grievance mechanisms play an essential role in ensuring respect for human rights, enabling affected stakeholders to directly seek remedy with the company; facilitating meaningful and ongoing rightsholder engagement; and serving as an early warning system for emerging risks and impacts. Grievance mechanisms and remedy are also important for the business. They support effective human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD) and help reduce risks and disruptions in business operations. They also build trust and social licence to operate. In order for grievance mechanisms to serve as an effective part of HREDD, companies need to build a culture of openness and trust in the mechanism, while also counteracting perceived and actual power imbalances between the company and affected people.
- What grievance mechanisms and remedy can look like: GBI identifies five core considerations to design effective grievance mechanisms and deliver meaningful remedy. First, maintain multiple channels for grievances, including both passive ones (like hotlines) with active ones (like community dialogue). Other examples include, worker voice tools co-created with workers, complaint boxes and shared industry-wide mechanisms. Companies can also participate in mediation-based processes with an Ombudsbody or OECD National Contact Point. Second, design grievance mechanisms that are fit for purpose, using the UNGPs’ eight effectiveness criteria. GBI also points out that effectiveness can be measured in the number of grievances coming in: if no grievances are coming in, it may mean that the mechanism isn’t trusted or not well-known. Third, support grievance channels with internal processes, like clear governance and lines of accountability, input from business functions, stakeholder involvement in design and review, transparency and regular monitoring. Other key factors include board oversight, channels for appeals, time-bound indicators, and tracking indicators of effectiveness. Fourth, consider a variety of remedy outcomes, not just financial compensation. Asking affected stakeholders what a fair remedy looks like is key to understanding what remedy can look like and what it needs to address. Fifth, use leverage to facilitate remedy, for example by working with peers sourcing from the same suppliers and using leverage with governments.
- Good practices and lessons learned from companies: The brief also offers a number of good practices, lessons learned and examples, informed by company experiences. First, consider testing a variety of different mechanisms using a pilot approach to start. In addition, assess effectiveness regularly and be prepared to modify and adapt it to meet emerging needs and expectations. Communication about the mechanism through different channels is important, as is working with intermediaries like civil society organisation, human rights defenders and trade unions who can build trust in the mechanism. Implement clear accountability lines and processes to respond to grievances quickly. For example, this could entail going through a third-party provider and triaging grievances internally, or making a grievance mechanism accessible to workers across suppliers as part of broader HREDD. Also consider approaching remedy through multistakeholder engagement, with clear accountability and commitment by all parties to their responsibilities. An engagement-based approach will need to recognise and address power imbalances in the process. Put measures in place to prevent repetition, for example by working with other stakeholders to address root causes or creating a structure geared towards preventing repetition, with lines of defence and oversight by a senior executive who can ensure learnings are integrated into the business. Finally, ensure that the mental health of stakeholders is protected, for example by using trauma-informed investigative techniques and offering mental health services to affected people. It is also important to ensure that staff responsible for addressing grievances receive mental health support.
