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.
To avoid the exploitation of migrant workers and other workers in vulnerable conditions in its supply chains, the company takes steps to ensure these workers understand the terms and conditions of their recruitment and employment and also understand their rights. It further takes steps to ensure its suppliers refrain from restricting workers’ movement, and it provides evidence of how it works with suppliers to ensure the rights of workers in vulnerable conditions are respected. Migrant workers and other workers in vulnerable conditions are at a higher risk of being in forced labor, and additional steps are needed to ensure their rights are respected. Conditions which render workers vulnerable may include characteristics such as gender or age and external factors, including workers' legal status, employment status, economic conditions, and work environment (such as isolation, dependency on the employer, or language barriers).
The company:
(1) takes steps to ensure migrant workers in its supply chains understand the terms and conditions of their recruitment and employment and also understand their rights;
(2) takes steps to ensure its suppliers refrain from restricting workers’ movement, including through the retention of passports or other personal documents against workers' will; and
(3) discloses at least two outcomes of steps it has taken to ensure respect of the fundamental rights and freedoms of supply chain workers in vulnerable conditions (those articulated in the ILO core labor standards, which include the elimination of forced labor).