Human rights are global and include liberties for all based on justice, respect, dignity, and equality. Businesses have an impact on human rights via their operations and commercial partnerships.
Most businesses are conscious that they must operate their operations in a manner that acknowledges and protects human rights to uphold the dignity of their personnel.
This paper covers the steps your business may take to establish human rights governance goals that comply with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
Guiding Principles for human rights administration
The international standard and explanation of the duties of governments and enterprises regarding human rights are the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Governments and corporations must provide adequate legal and non-judicial procedures for individuals when human rights have been violated. Businesses must adhere to human rights laws, refrain from violating the liberties of others, and redress violations. Governments must safeguard individuals from human rights violations committed by other parties via laws, policy, and adjudication.
There is no common norm for incorporating human rights into a business’s organizational culture and operations. Yet, there is widespread agreement that human rights management aims should address the following areas:
- Governance and administration
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has the most effect when integrated into a company’s governance and management procedures. Governance begins with the executive team and board of directors. Designing and implementing high-level governance mechanisms supported by senior management is essential. Operations are essential to ensure that each function and division understands the significance of human rights due diligence.
It is also essential to comprehend how due diligence affects the day-to-day operations of your staff and how top leadership evaluates their performance. Each function and division should have a list of significant human rights based on its particular activity.
- Strategy
After evaluating your company’s human rights effects and prioritizing a special combination of significant human rights activities and challenges, you should concentrate on the following:
- Creating a human rights plan that has the backing of the company’s top management, directors, and employees
- constructing a matrix of planned activities and ideas for moving forward
- Choosing the strategy, focal regions, and limits
- The plan should include a mission statement, policies and processes, objectives and commitments, a clear assignment of roles, and key performance indicators.
- Commitments
- Your organization’s human rights governance goals should be aligned with the following:
- Health and safety of employees and independent contractors
- Transparency and absence of unethical influence
- Human Rights and ethical purchase in the supplier chain
- Regulatory and legal standards compliance
- Resource management and garbage disposal
- Personnel development
- Optimization of innovative technologies
- Performance objectives
Your organization should establish a performance goal for each of its promises. Priority should be placed on efficiently controlling material hazards and achieving stakeholders’ expectations.
- Methods and techniques
Businesses must adopt processes that help with the execution of human rights initiatives. They should include the whole of the operations and activities of the company. In addition, organizations must adopt procedures to detect human rights-related threats and possibilities within the context of cultural, political, social, and economic factors.
Are you putting human rights governance goals into practice?
The business rationale for respecting human rights might differ by industry and country of operation. It enhances staff recruitment, retention, motivation, stakeholder interactions, and risk assessment.
The UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework is an ideal foundation for businesses to report on and manage their significant human rights challenges.
Conclusion
One of the highly reputed Global Employment companies ‘Soundlines’, provides fully integrated international talent resourcing and outsourcing services to clients. Additionally, Soundlines serves both blue-collar recruitment and white-collar recruitment in varied industries, searching for the best recruit more defined and successful every time.
Soundlines has offices in 23+ countries to facilitate the recruitment process for both employers and candidates. Soundlines offers organizations, access to its global experience while maintaining a local presence, ensuring that it understands your brand, culture, needs, and future goals.
Soundlines has served clients in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Poland, Russia, and Romania as a global HR recruitment industry leader for over two decades.
