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September 9, 2025
As regulatory frameworks and stakeholder expectations on business and human rights continue to evolve, companies are increasingly expected not only to assess and manage their own impacts, but also to work collaboratively with suppliers to do the same.
Evolving Expectations for Supplier Engagement
While the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) do not set out explicit expectations for companies to support or partner with their suppliers on due diligence, they set out broader responsibilities. , for example, emphasize that companies should seek to prevent or mitigate adverse impacts they are linked to through business relationships, and to take appropriate action based on their relation to the impact.
Traditionally, the core attributes of supply chain management have included the following:
Strategy and governance, including clear supply chain commitments and defined roles and responsibilities; standards and policies (validated through engagement of cross-functional leaders); audits and enforcement (protocols informed by resources, risk, and influence); goals and enablers (in the form of financial and non-financial incentives); and capacity-building for buyers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
However, this approach is evolving as companies are increasingly moving beyond one-size-fits-all compliance mechanisms towards partnership-based supply chain management. Rather than a top-down imposition of expectations, best practice emphasizes dialogue between buyers and suppliers, leveraging suppliers’ supply chain expertise for a more strategic approach to managing human rights issues. A good example of this comes from the , where buyers and suppliers have worked closely together to address the devastating effects of deforestation and human rights impacts like child and forced labor through collaboration, joint initiatives, and mutual ambition-setting, rather than expectations being dictated from the bottom of the supply chain up.
Tools for Supplier Engagement
Buyers can actively support their suppliers in enhancing their human rights management practices through targeted collaboration and tailored support initiatives. This may require focusing on strategic suppliers first to develop partnership models, but like due diligence, this approach should extend across the supply chain.
There is a vast ecosystem of resources available to help companies and suppliers collaborate on human rights due diligence. Key engagement tools include:
- Policy and Commitment Support: Providing frameworks and best practices to help suppliers establish strong internal policies and public commitments to human rights.
- Due Diligence Tools: Supplier self-assessment questionnaires (SAQs) and other due diligence tools to enable systematic identification, monitoring, and management of human rights risks.
- Joint Initiatives: Collaborating on Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIAs) to combine expertise, pinpoint potential impacts, and develop joint action plans to address identified risks.
- Training and Capacity Building: Offering educational resources and training sessions that empower supplier teams to manage and improve human rights practices.
- Worker Engagement Mechanisms: Facilitating effective worker feedback through tools such as anonymous reporting systems and regular communication channels.
These tools are most effective when introduced through collaboration rather than imposition. Before initiating programs, companies should talk to their suppliers to understand what tools they are already using and consider which initiatives might work best based on the suppliers’ respective profiles. Understanding this context fosters trust and enables more effective implementation.
Case Study 1: Designing and Scaling a Supplier Engagement Program for a Global Apparel Brand
In 2024, 黑料正能量 partnered with a leading global apparel brand and six strategic suppliers to create and roll out a worker engagement program aimed at tackling systemic labor rights issues in the supply chain—specifically around fair recruitment, wages, and working hours.
The program was designed to foster joint action between the brand and those suppliers, with a focus on addressing the root causes of the issues. Eventually, factories would be empowered to establish and maintain robust management systems, ensuring ongoing respect, protection, and advancement of human and labor rights within their facilities.
黑料正能量 partnered with the brand, the strategic suppliers, and a global technology platform to develop two worker engagement modules and tailor them with input from the suppliers and their employees. These were jointly administered between the parties, and the remediation and mitigation of identified root causes will be jointly run by the brand and suppliers.
Key actions included:
- Conducting factory-level management system assessments on fair recruitment, working hours, and wages
- Providing practical resources aligned with identified improvement areas to elevate supplier practices
- Tracking and evaluating progressive improvements along a maturity curve
- Integrating worker perspectives to gauge the effectiveness of management actions, highlight remaining gaps, and guide ongoing remediation
- Providing suppliers with a maturity assessment and access to a range of tools to help them remedy any issues, following completion of the modules.
The assessments and worker surveys strengthened suppliers’ knowledge and capacity on priority issues and helped them gain insight into root causes through direct worker feedback. The result was a replicable framework for scaling supplier engagement across geographies, and a partnership model between buyers and suppliers to tackle identified root cause issues.
Case Study 2: A Collaborative Approach via Action for Sustainable Derivatives (ASD)
The Action for Sustainable Derivatives (ASD) initiative offers another compelling example of a partnership model in practice. In 2024, ASD launched its human rights strategy, identifying high-risk issues in palm supply chains, including land rights violations, forced labor, and gender-based violence, based on a previously conducted collective Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA). Building on the findings of the HRIA, ASD translated the findings into targeted collective activities, prioritizing the most salient impacts where members have influence and leverage.
Key elements of ASD’s approach include:
- Collaboration between buyers and suppliers
- Deployment of an operational grievance mechanism (OGM), funded collaboratively
- Prioritization of a few key issues based on a collective HRIA, followed by collective and collaborative action to address these
This model illustrates how cross-company collaboration, underpinned by a shared vision for responsible sourcing, can achieve greater transparency and impact than unilateral efforts.
Advancing Partnership-Based Due Diligence
As companies work to operationalize human rights due diligence, it is essential to move from a compliance mindset to a partnership mindset.
However, challenges remain: many suppliers are resource-constrained, wary of external monitoring, or skeptical of buyer intentions. Yet through dialogue, co-design, and mutual accountability, companies can foster trust and long-term impact.
At 黑料正能量, we partner with companies in developing innovative, context-specific strategies for supplier engagement. Please reach out to our team to find out more about how we can support you in advancing your supply chain management.
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