KnowTheChain benchmarks current corporate practices, develops insights, and provides practical resources that inform investor decisions and enable companies to comply with growing legal obligations while operating more transparently and responsibly.
The KnowTheChain benchmarks aim to help companies protect the wellbeing of workers by incentivizing companies and identifying gaps in each sector evaluated.
The KnowTheChain methodology is based on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and covers policy commitments, due diligence, and remedy. The methodology uses the ILO core labor standards (which cover the human rights that the ILO has declared to be fundamental rights at work: freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, and the elimination of forced labor, child labor, and discrimination) as a baseline standard. The methodology has been developed through consultation with a wide range of stakeholders and a review of other benchmarks, frameworks, and guidelines such as the OECD Due Diligence Guidance on Responsible Business Conduct.
The company engages with relevant stakeholders on forced labor and human trafficking. This includes engaging with policy makers, worker rights organizations, or local NGOs in countries in which its first- and lower-tier suppliers operate, as well as actively participating in one or more multi-stakeholder or industry initiatives. To fully understand and address working conditions in sourcing countries, companies need to engage with potentially affected groups and local stakeholders such as trade unions, worker organizations, or local NGOs—in addition to engaging suppliers. Furthermore, as forced labor risks tend to be systemic in nature, collaboration with other companies, for example, to engage policy makers to strengthen labor legislation, is needed to address forced labor in supply chains.
In the last three years, the company has engaged relevant stakeholders by:
(1) providing at least two examples of engagements on forced labor and human trafficking with stakeholders such as policy makers, worker rights organizations, or local NGOs in countries in which its first-tier suppliers and suppliers below the first tier operate; and
(2) actively participating in one or more multi-stakeholder or industry initiatives focused on eradicating forced labor and human trafficking across the industry.