Alliance Manchester Business School has launched a new executive education programme focusing on the private sector’s growing responsibility towards human rights. The programme will be delivered by the School’s Business and Human Rights Catalyst and will provide executives with an in-depth and innovative understanding of the challenges and opportunities for improving business performance and human rights.
As a former head of corporate responsibility at Swiss industrial giant ABB, Ron Popper was at the forefront of adopting human rights policies within the business.
“If you have strong leadership saying how human rights is going to be embedded in your culture and decision-making, then these policies become clear throughout an organisation.”
Corporate responsibility goes much further than some lofty vision of global philanthropic programmes. At its core it is about how to embed societal and human rights thinking and criteria within business processes and practices.
ABB was a company ahead of its time in this regard, adopting its first human rights policy in 2007 before the UN remedy framework had even been published. Six years earlier I actually joined the business in a senior communications role, but within a few years I had begun managing some sensitive human rights and crisis management issues in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
It soon became clear that human rights in multinational companies is a leadership issue. If you have strong leadership saying how human rights is going to be embedded in your culture and decision-making, then these policies become clear throughout an organisation.
Pace of change
Today the pace of change around this agenda has never been faster. We are seeing increasing regulatory pressure from governments across the world, at the same time as witnessing far more pressure from investors, business partners and civil society.
If companies get their human rights wrong they know today it will not only harm human beings, but also damage their business in terms of legal disputes, investor pressure, poor media and reputational damage.
And then there is growing employee interest to consider too. Attracting and retaining workers has never been more important and employees want to work for moral companies, not those that are in the headlines for the wrong reasons. Bad news travels fast today, people are much more clued-up. If you spend time and resources training employees you don’t want them to then leave because of negative reputational issues.
There has never been a greater need for executive management understanding and leadership on these issues, and that’s why this course should appeal to senior managers. The course is also being taught in a language that business can understand. Finding the right tone and language to translate difficult issues into readily understood business terms is a challenge but can be done.
Current roles
Since retiring from ABB I have taken up a number of roles in this area, for instance I am co-chair of the Global Business Initiative on Human Rights, and a trustee of the Institute for Human Rights and Business.
I first became aware of the Business and Human Rights Catalyst at Alliance MBS last year when the school was looking to see how it could contribute to this growing debate and I took part in a workshop exploring these issues.
I found that event inspirational with a lot of different stakeholders from different backgrounds contributing new ideas, rather than just traditional thinking. I am genuinely excited to be returning this year as academics, lawyers and business leaders come together to provide a well-rounded perspective of what businesses and organisations should aspire to with this agenda.
Philip Jordan spent much of his career at oil giant Total, one of the very first multinationals to fully embrace the business and human rights agenda
“You never reach a point where you can say business and human rights is ‘all done’, it is a continual process and always will be.”
You might suspect that oil companies would not be near the top of the list for implementing business and human rights within their organisations.
Yet the opposite was certainly true at French giant Total which first began adopting this agenda almost 20 years ago. Back then the company had just merged with Petrofina and Elf and produced a new Code of Conduct to clarify the business principles of the new Group.
Management wanted to give a common language to all employees in terms of business conduct, and an Ethics Committee was subsequently created to give guidance and to advise on resolving dilemmas.
What was striking was that respect for human rights was integrated from day one. In the following years talking about human rights became more and more explicit throughout the organisation. Then the UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs) came along and many of the principles reinforced things we had already been working on.
Career
I had operational roles in the company when these principles were being applied within the business. For instance in 2003 I went to Johannesburg as CEO of Total South Africa and the group organised an ethical evaluation of the subsidiary where an independent company verified how the principles of the Code of conduct were being implemented, including human rights issues such as working conditions and non-discrimination.
In 2011 Total would go on to publish its own human rights guide explaining to employees and other stakeholders what was meant by human rights in Total. Three main areas were identified: human rights in the workplace; human rights and local communities; and human rights and security. The following year I became chairman of the group’s Ethics Committee.
Looking back today a company like Total has made a huge amount of progress, but it cannot afford to rest on its laurels. Staff change, operations change, contracts change. You never reach a point where you can say business and human rights is ‘all done’, it is a continual process and always will be. For instance, ensuring compliance within supply chains remains one of the most challenging areas to manage.
Education
Ultimately business knows that it has to deliver on this agenda which is why I would have been very interested to have had the opportunity to attend an executive education course like this during my own career.
When I was taking up my first management positions in the group these issues were not explicitly on the radar and one of the big challenges we still face is trying to convince some people that what we are actually talking about is important and clearly linked to successfully achieving business objectives.
Looking back, one of the key lessons I learnt was that if you do a lot of good work upfront in terms of due diligence and impact assessments, then you save yourself a lot of hassle further down the road. But most important of all was engendering an atmosphere where people could speak up if they had concerns and ensuring they had access to the best advice to find remedies.
Nicole Bigby, Partner at law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, explains the role of lawyers in assisting business with human rights.
“Business and human rights is not about philanthropy, it is about responsibility for the footprint of the organisation and its activities.”
During my career I have done a lot of work around the role of lawyers in supporting and promoting the business and human rights agenda. In recent years I have had a particularly strong interest in the challenges of disseminating the UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs), both in terms of engagement and building capacity, and working with businesses to integrate addressing human rights risks as part of their legal and risk management systems and approaches.
In my view one of the key challenges is to broaden and deepen this discussion beyond CSR and ensure all areas of a business are engaged in hardwiring UNGPs aligned thinking into and across all of their management systems, including legal, governance and risk.
Inter-disciplinary
What the last few years have shown me is the critical importance of inter-disciplinary perspectives and skills, and the power of innovative approaches that tackle complex issues from all sides and in new ways.
It is also about building awareness, engagement and identifying champions at board level who can be key protagonists in bridging understanding and communicating these issues in the language of CEOs, non-executive directors and audit and risk committees and driving greater visible ownership at this level.
Business and human rights is not about philanthropy, it is about responsibility for the footprint of the organisation and its activities. It is about responsibility driven by the impact of the company’s activities and business relationships on people and their human rights, not on the company – although the former often drives derivative risk for the company.
Role of laywers
So what is the role of lawyers in this area? In short we have a significant role to play as technical and trusted advisors on legal and risk management issues, especially as the UNGPs (and its approach) are now reflected in public policy, domestic laws and international standards, sectoral and industry guidance and tools, company policy and processes, and in driving new means of resolving disputes and grievances.
We have a very powerful role to play in helping companies understand these concepts and navigating them in terms of how to internalise them. Indeed, as a firm we have noticed an increasing tendency for companies coming to us and saying they want to engage with this agenda in a pro-active way.
Legislation such as the UK Modern Slavery Act, France’s recent Duty of Corporate Vigilance law, proposed modern slavery legislation in Australia, the Responsible Business Initiative in Switzerland, or sector specific measures such as the Responsible Mining Index, are already starting to change the global dynamic through their collective impact.
The more that these levers can be aligned to pull in the same direction, the stronger the overall power of the interconnected system and the inevitability of diminishing places and chances to hide and avoid accountability in this environment of increased transparency.
Diverse
There is still a diverse spectrum of sectoral engagement and development – with leaders and laggards – and even within leading sectors. There is significant variation, often with a leadership group of companies and those who are still to fully engage or who are just starting to grapple with how to move beyond a policy commitment and mainstream human rights due diligence, tracking and reporting on progress.
Assisting SMEs who are committed to addressing human rights risks in designing approaches that proportionately, and effectively, target salient areas of human rights risk and leverage collaboration, knowledge sharing and “open source” resources to overcome capacity and resourcing constraints, is still very much a work in progress.
And let’s not forget technology and the emergence of systems such as blockchain either. Technology is another powerful driver in this agenda and presents an enormous opportunity to seek to address the scope, scale and complexity of business and human rights issues.
The more traction we can build across this broad range of businesses in all sectors, regions and stages of social and economic development, the richer the dialogue and practice we will have available to assess what can work effectively.
Ultimately for companies recognition and acting upon their responsibility to respect human rights is increasingly part of the “new normal” for managing legal and governance risks, and to build and sustain better businesses and protect and promote their reputations.
For more information about the programme, visit www.mbs.ac.uk/bhrprogramme or email bhrcatalyst@manchester.ac.uk