This resource was developed by Shift in support of the UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework, a joint initiative of Shift and Mazars.

In addition to giving companies a clear way to improve their human rights reporting, the UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework is a powerful tool to help companies implement the UN Guiding Principles by facilitating the development and improvement of internal management systems on human rights.

“This is finally something short and clear that says what we need to ask ourselves to implement the UNGPs. This two-page document [the Reporting Framework questions] is something I can put on the table when I brief my CEO and get his attention.”
– Ethical trade manager at apparel company

This page lists examples of how companies are using the UNGP Reporting Framework to support or improve their internal management of human rights risks, quite apart from their external reporting. Understood and used in this way, companies are finding that the Reporting Framework isn’t a burden or cost aimed just at satisfying external readers; but instead, the exercise of answering the questions of the Reporting Framework brings real value to the company’s internal management systems.

“For years we have searched for a way to help our member companies talk to their suppliers about managing human rights issues. The Reporting Framework finally provides that path forward, by asking straightforward questions that customers can ask their suppliers, in order to start a meaningful conversation about human rights. This is better than emailing an audit checklist and walking away!”
– Staff member of business association

Examples of uses of the UNGP Reporting Framework for internal management

• Supplier training: A food, beverage and agriculture company is using the UNGP Reporting Framework in its training for its suppliers, to build the suppliers’ understanding of what the company is looking for when it asks for processes to identify and act upon human rights-related risks;
• Gap analysis: An oil and gas company is using the UNGP Reporting Framework to structure an internal gap analysis, to better understand what processes it already has in place aligned with the UN Guiding Principles, and where the gaps may be;
• Code of Conduct training: An apparel company has used the UNGP Reporting Framework in training for those responsible for sustainability and its Code of Conduct;
• Build awareness with leadership: A mining company is using the UNGP Reporting Framework to build senior leadership’s awareness of what is meant by human rights and how they connect to its business;
• Develop a human rights policy: An oil and gas company is using the UNGP Reporting Framework to support the development of its human rights policy, including identifying salient human rights issues that the company wants to name in its policy commitment;
• Support disclosure for regulatory compliance: An apparel company is using the UNGP Reporting Framework to identify what to disclose on trafficked and forced labor, in response to the UK’s Modern Slavery Act supply chain transparency requirements;
• Improve risk management systems: A food, beverage and agriculture company is using the UNGP Reporting Framework to reflect internally on how to take human rights into account in its existing risk management system;
• Understand how the business impacts human rights: Multiple companies are using the extra resource in the Reporting Framework annex that illustrates how businesses can impact human rights, to better understand how their own activities or those of their business partners and others in their value chain may impact different stakeholder groups.

Is your company using the UNGP Reporting Framework for internal management? We welcome examples whether named or anonymous, to further general learning. Please share your example with us. Thank you!