In September 2020, Shift hosted a webinar on LGBTQI rights and the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, under the UN Guiding Principles. In the webinar, advisor Daniel Berezowsky discussed structural vulnerability due to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender expression, gender identity and/or sex variations. Business Learning Participants can access the full recording in the Business Learning Portal.
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Does our human rights work… work? The case for experimentation and testing
Everyone working to ensure that business acts with respect for people is in the business of behavior change. We want companies, and individuals within them, to act in ways that enable respect for human rights. That being so, it’s intriguing that we have not drawn on the vast range of existing psychological insights about how to influence behavior. In our first-of-its-kind experiment in the business and human rights field, we drew on the field of behavioral science to test how consumer choices might help to reduce pressure on couriers delivering online purchases. We found how best to nudge consumer behavior, which provided some surprising discoveries, data and evidence about what works.
We simulated an online shopping experience and asked 2,500 people to select their delivery options. Consumers’ delivery choices can place pressure on couriers handling the items. Using the latest psychological research, we designed six behaviorally-informed nudges to test what was most effective in nudging consumers towards choosing longer delivery times. This experiment and its revelations demonstrate the need for evidence and experiments… Continue to the full Viewpoint.
Katryn Wright is a Shift Associate. As a researcher, Katryn focuses on leveraging behavioral science to address common business and human rights and behavior change initiatives.
Edward Gardiner works as the Behavioural Design Lead at Warwick Business School.
Dr. Umar Taj is a Research Fellow in Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School.
Adding Human Rights to the Shopping Cart
Online shopping is booming. In the UK in 2019, average weekly online retail sales rose from £1.45billion in 2019 to £2.2billion in May 2020. Retailers have struggled to keep up with demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, comparing it to the Black Friday and Christmas rush periods. A critical part of the online shopping value chain are logistics companies who fulfill retailers’ delivery to consumers. The industry is fast-changing but many logistics companies rely on couriers who are often self-employed, not provided holiday or sick pay and face fines or don’t get paid at all if an item is not delivered.
Longer delivery windows enable better planning and forecasting, provided that retailers pass on the additional time to their logistics providers, who use it to support couriers. While some logistics providers pay couriers a premium to deliver high-value items, the delivery of these items can also place additional pressures on them. Self-employed couriers tend to only be paid if the item is delivered, which can delay or dilute payment if the courier must make multiple trips.
Shift – through it’s Valuing Respect Project – partnered with the Behavioral Science Group at Warwick Business School to see if behavioral science could suggest some ways to nudge consumers towards longer delivery windows that could reduce pressures on couriers.
Over the last few years, Shift has engaged with UK retailers, logistics providers and other stakeholders on the full spectrum of human rights challenges in final mile delivery in the UK. One driver of these challenges is customer choice when buying online and this experiment focuses specifically on the ways that consumers can be nudged to make more responsible decisions in relation to online delivery. A future Shift publication will address the wider human rights issues in final mile delivery and the ways that retailers, logistics providers, trade unions and Government can play a role in building a rights-respecting logistics sector in the UK in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adding Human Rights to the Shopping Cart
Online shopping is booming. In the UK in 2019, average weekly online retail sales rose from £1.45billion in 2019 to £2.2billion in May 2020. Retailers have struggled to keep up with demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, comparing it to the Black Friday and Christmas rush periods. A critical part of the online shopping value chain are logistics companies who fulfill retailers’ delivery to consumers. The industry is fast-changing but many logistics companies rely on couriers who are often self-employed, not provided holiday or sick pay and face fines or don’t get paid at all if an item is not delivered.
Longer delivery windows enable better planning and forecasting, provided that retailers pass on the additional time to their logistics providers, who use it to support couriers. While some logistics providers pay couriers a premium to deliver high-value items, the delivery of these items can also place additional pressures on them. Self-employed couriers tend to only be paid if the item is delivered, which can delay or dilute payment if the courier must make multiple trips.
Shift – through it’s Valuing Respect Project – partnered with the Behavioral Science Group at Warwick Business School to see if behavioral science could suggest some ways to nudge consumers towards longer delivery windows that could reduce pressures on couriers.
Testing Ways to Nudge Consumer Behavior
With that in mind, we ran an online shopping simulation experiment with 2,500 regular online shoppers in the UK. Participants were asked to imagine they were buying a low-value (book), medium-value (coat) and high-value (laptop) product. They were then asked to select their delivery preference for each. Participants were randomized into different groups and shown a range of delivery options, including:
Same-Day Delivery | Nex-Day Delivery | 2-3 Days | 3-5 Days |
£6.49 | £4.99 | £1.99 | Free |
The control group received no nudge and acted as a point of reference to compare the effectiveness of the groups receiving the nudges. Participants in this group saw a list of delivery options from fast to slow, with the fastest option as the default. This mirrored how many popular online retailers present delivery options. Each of the other groups saw the same list of delivery options as the control group combined with a different “nudge,” as we tested how best to encourage consumers to choose “3-5 day” delivery instead of “same day” delivery. The nudges ( A nudge is a change in choice architecture to influence behavior and decisions in ways that are easy and cost-free and that retain freedom of choice. ) were:
Decoy
Decoy
Consumers were given an additional 12-14 day option, in order to make 3-5 days appear more reasonable.
Default
Default
The slowest delivery option (3-5 days) was pre-selected.
Empathy
Empathy
The consumer was shown a picture of a courier with a message about how their choice would affect them.
Ordering
Ordering
The delivery options were reversed, from longest to soonest, keeping the “same day” option pre-selected.
Recommended
Recommended
A message was added saying “Standard 3-5 day delivery is recommended by the Good Courier Network, an alliance of delivery providers who commit to responsible working practices for their drivers”.
Social
Social
A message was added saying, “Over 80% of people who purchase this item choose the Standard ‘3-5 day’ delivery option”.
Key Findings
Our starting point was the control group, where 18% of consumers chose the free, “3-5 day” delivery option. Our experiment then tested how we could bring this number down by nudging consumers. The graph below shows how nudges were effective in lowering the 18% by up to 4 points:
1. Consumers Want More Expensive Items to Arrive Sooner
As the item value increases, fewer consumers choose the free delivery option and more of them go for same-day delivery, even if they have to pay an additional £ 6.49.
Percentage of Consumers Who Chose the Free, “3-5 Day” Delivery Option
Percentage of consumers willing to pay £6.49 to receive their product the day they ordered it
2. The effectiveness of the nudges appears to be dependent on the value of the purchased product
Different nudges were more or less effective depending on what consumers were buying. For instance, when consumers were buying a laptop, they were more susceptible to change their behavior with the ’empathy’ nudge; however, when they were buying a coat, they were more responsive to ordering and recommendation. Interestingly, no nudge had a statistically significant effect on consumers buying the low-ticketed item, which was a book. This is not surprising as data confirmed that people are unwilling to pay for smaller value items to be delivered.
How nudges affected consumer behavior depending on the product they were buying
MOST EFFECTIVE NUDGE:
EMPATHY
MOST EFFECTIVE NUDGES:
Ordering and Recommendation
MOST EFFECTIVE NUDGES:
No nudge made a statistically significant difference
It may be that buying an expensive, long-term investment item such as a laptop triggers more analytical thinking and makes the consumer more receptive to the reasoning in the message from the courier.
3. Several nudges that are effective in other contexts, didn’t seem to alter consumer behavior.
Some nudges did not have a significant effect on any of the three products. For instance, changing the delivery option that appeared by default did not significantly alter consumer choice. This was particularly surprising. Defaults are well-established, powerful nudges in behavioral science and in real-world settings. However, in this case, consumers chose to actively move away from the default to select other options.
4. Consumers who identify as women and are 35 or older were more likely to choose the free, “3-5 day” delivery option.
Across the items, consumers who identified as women were 64% more likely to actively select “standard delivery” when purchasing the book than those who identified as men. Age also played a role in consumer behavior. For instance, compared to consumers aged 18-34, those aged 35 and over were 57-80% more likely to choose “3-5 day” delivery.
5. Shoppers may claim to be ethical consumers. That doesn’t necessarily reflect in their behavior.
Almost half of the consumers (48.2%) said they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: “I consider myself an ethical consumer.” This was particularly relevant in the case of consumers with higher income and younger consumers. However, their behavior showed no difference in actuality from consumers with lower income or older consumers.
So, what does this mean for a business?
- By simply changing the order of how delivery options are presented, retailers can significantly impact the decisions that consumers make.
Changing the order of delivery options led to a decrease in “same day” delivery and a significant increase in “3-5 day” delivery. For the coat, “same day” delivery dropped from 3% in the control group to 0.8%. And “3-5 day” delivery jumped from 85% in the control group to 91% in the order group.
Changing the order is an inexpensive, easy to implement solution that businesses should consider.
- When the price tag is high, empathy is key.
High-ticket items — such as a laptop, are critical to nudge given their potential impact on couriers (a book may be posted through letterboxes, while a laptop will need a signature). Simply showing a humanizing picture of a courier with a message that encourages consumers to consider how their choice could place a burden on them appeared to trigger a more reflective, analytical thought process that leads consumers to choose a longer delivery window.
- Men and young consumers are less likely to choose delivery options that are better for couriers. We need more research to know how to change that.
More research could help us better understand how certain nudges could be tailored to different demographic groups, in order to increase the number of consumers who choose the “3-5 day” delivery option.
- Measuring behavior, and not just stated preferences or attitudes, is critical.
In this experiment, participants were fairly likely to describe themselves as ethical consumers, however, this did not correlate to their actual behavior in all cases. We need to look at what people actually do, not just what they say they will do. Focusing on real-world behavior and decisions is the only way of understanding whether our interventions work.
Over the last few years, Shift has engaged with UK retailers, logistics providers and other stakeholders on the full spectrum of human rights challenges in final mile delivery in the UK. One driver of these challenges is customer choice when buying online and this experiment focuses specifically on the ways that consumers can be nudged to make more responsible decisions in relation to online delivery. A future Shift publication will address the wider human rights issues in final mile delivery and the ways that retailers, logistics providers, trade unions and Government can play a role in building a rights-respecting logistics sector in the UK in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Applying Leadership and Governance Indicators of Rights-Respecting Culture
This note sets out Shift’s key take-aways from a series of single-stakeholder consultations we organized between July and August 2020, as part of the Valuing Respect Project. The consultations focused on opportunities and challenges for boards, company practitioners, business associations, banks, investors, governments and Civil Society Organizations to use the Valuing Respect Leadership and Governance Indicators of Rights-Respecting Culture and supporting resources in their work.
Applying Indicators of Business Model Red Flags
This note sets out Shift’s key take-aways from a series of single-stakeholder consultations we organized between July and and August 2020, as part of the Valuing Respect Project. The consultations focused on opportunities and challenges for boards, company practitioners, business associations, banks, investors, governments and Civil Society Organizations to use the Valuing Respect Business Model Red Flags Indicators and supporting resources in their work.
Black Lives Matter: Putting Human Rights at the Heart of Corporate Responses
All businesses have a responsibility under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to take action to respect human rights in connection with their own operations and their extended value chain. This responsibility is a globally acknowledged and expected standard of conduct that is increasingly reflected in national laws, the expectations of investors, NGO and trade union advocacy, the standards set by influential industry bodies and the commitments of companies themselves. In the US, the Department of State actively promotes the UN Guiding Principles to US companies.
We see three main ways in which companies need to grapple with these human rights harms – both the immediate risks to protestors as well as the underlying inequalities that the BLM movement is raising.
These are:
- Connections to short-term risks to protestors’ safety and freedom of speech
- Connections between a company’s own operations and racial discrimination over the long-term
- Company involvement in broader advocacy on BLM policy goals
COVID-19 and Human Rights: Impacts and Business Action in the Seafood Sector
This webinar –organized by the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions— focused on:
- The experience of people on the frontlines of seafood production across geographies (focus on the Global South) with regard to human rights, health and safety, and equity before and during COVID-19
- Current efforts and interventions to address these issues and where new approaches are needed, and if the impacts of COVID-19 requires new/different interventions, and
- The role NGOs and seafood companies can play to support efforts and address the needs of workers and communities.
Panelists included Neill Wilkins, Head of Migrant Workers Programme (IHRB); Ines Lopez, Catalyst of Change (COBI); and Francis West, Shift’s Business Engagement Director.
Human Rights Due Diligence during COVID-19 and Lessons for the Future
This panel was part of the UN Virtual Forum on Responsible Business and Human Rights 2020. Panelists included Shubha Sekhar, Livio Sarandrea, Cristina Tébar Less, Tara Dermott and Payal Jain. The discussion was facilitated by Shift’s Vice President, Rachel Davis.
The video is courtesy of UNDP’s B+HR Asia Pacific
Access to Remedy
Pillar 3: Access to remedy
Foundational Principle
25. As part of their duty to protect against business-related human rights abuse, States must take appropriate steps to ensure, through judicial, administrative, legislative or other appropriate means, that when such abuses occur within their territory and/or jurisdiction those affected have access to effective remedy.
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Commentary
Unless States take appropriate steps to investigate, punish and redress business-related human rights abuses when they do occur, the State duty to protect can be rendered weak or even meaningless.
Access to effective remedy has both procedural and substantive aspects. The remedies provided by the grievance mechanisms discussed in this section may take a range of substantive forms the aim of which, generally speaking, will be to counteract or make good any human rights harms that have occurred. Remedy may include apologies, restitution, rehabilitation, financial or non-financial compensation and punitive sanctions (whether criminal or administrative, such as fines), as well as the prevention of harm through, for example, injunctions or guarantees of non-repetition.
Procedures for the provision of remedy should be impartial, protected from corruption and free from political or other attempts to influence the outcome.
For the purpose of these Guiding Principles, a grievance is understood to be a perceived injustice evoking an individual’s or a group’s sense of entitlement, which may be based on law, contract, explicit or implicit promises, customary practice, or general notions of fairness of aggrieved communities. The term grievance mechanism is used to indicate any routinized, State-based or non-State-based, judicial or non-judicial process through which grievances concerning business-related human rights abuse can be raised and remedy can be sought.
State-based grievance mechanisms may be administered by a branch or agency of the State, or by an independent body on a statutory or constitutional basis. They may be judicial or non-judicial. In some mechanisms, those affected are directly involved in seeking remedy; in others, an intermediary seeks remedy on their behalf. Examples include the courts (for both criminal and civil actions), labour tribunals, national human rights institutions, National Contact Points under the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, many ombudsperson offices, and Government-run complaints offices.
Ensuring access to remedy for business-related human rights abuses requires also that States facilitate public awareness and understanding of these mechanisms, how they can be accessed, and any support (financial or expert) for doing so.
State-based judicial and non-judicial grievance mechanisms should form the foundation of a wider system of remedy. Within such a system, operational-level grievance mechanisms can provide early-stage recourse and resolution. State-based and operational-level mechanisms, in turn, can be supplemented or enhanced by the remedial functions of collaborative initiatives as well as those of international and regional human rights mechanisms. Further guidance with regard to these mechanisms is provided in Guiding Principles 26 to 31.
Operational Principles
STATE-BASED JUDICIAL MECHANISMS
26. States should take appropriate steps to ensure the effectiveness of domestic judicial mechanisms when addressing business-related human rights abuses, including considering ways to reduce legal, practical and other relevant barriers that could lead to a denial of access to remedy.
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Commentary
Effective judicial mechanisms are at the core of ensuring access to remedy. Their ability to address business-related human rights abuses depends on their impartiality, integrity and ability to accord due process. States should ensure that they do not erect barriers to prevent legitimate cases from being brought before the courts in situations where judicial recourse is an essential part of accessing remedy or alternative sources of effective remedy are unavailable.
They should also ensure that the provision of justice is not prevented by corruption of the judicial process, that courts are independent of economic or political pressures from other State agents and from business actors, and that the legitimate and peaceful activities of human rights defenders are not obstructed.
Legal barriers that can prevent legitimate cases involving business-related human rights abuse from being addressed can arise where, for example:
- The way in which legal responsibility is attributed among members of a corporate group under domestic criminal and civil laws facilitates the avoidance of appropriate accountability;
- Where claimants face a denial of justice in a host State and cannot access home State courts regardless of the merits of the claim;
- Where certain groups, such as indigenous peoples and migrants, are excluded from the same level of legal protection of their human rights that applies to the wider population.
Practical and procedural barriers to accessing judicial remedy can arise where, for example:
- The costs of bringing claims go beyond being an appropriate deterrent to unmeritorious cases and/or cannot be reduced to reasonable levels through Government support, “market-based” mechanisms (such as litigation insurance and legal fee structures), or other means;
- Claimants experience difficulty in securing legal representation, due to a lack of resources or of other incentives for lawyers to advise claimants in this area;
- There are inadequate options for aggregating claims or enabling representative proceedings (such as class actions and other collective action procedures), and this prevents effective remedy for individual claimants;
- State prosecutors lack adequate resources, expertise and support to meet the State’s own obligations to investigate individual and business involvement in human rights-related crimes.
Many of these barriers are the result of, or compounded by, the frequent imbalances between the parties to business related human rights claims, such as in their financial resources, access to information and expertise. Moreover, whether through active discrimination or as the unintended consequences of the way judicial mechanisms are designed and operate, individuals from groups or populations at heightened risk of vulnerability or marginalization often face additional cultural, social, physical and financial impediments to accessing, using and benefiting from these mechanisms.
Particular attention should be given to the rights and specific needs of such groups or populations at each stage of the remedial process: access, procedures and outcome.
STATE-BASED NON-JUDICIAL GRIEVANCE MECHANISMS
27. States should provide effective and appropriate non-judicial grievance mechanisms, alongside judicial mechanisms, as part of a comprehensive State-based system for the remedy of business-related human rights abuse.
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Commentary
Administrative, legislative and other non-judicial mechanisms play an essential role in complementing and supplementing judicial mechanisms. Even where judicial systems are effective and well-resourced, they cannot carry the burden of addressing all alleged abuses; judicial remedy is not always required; nor is it always the favoured approach for all claimants.
Gaps in the provision of remedy for business-related human rights abuses could be filled, where appropriate, by expanding the mandates of existing non-judicial mechanisms and/or by adding new mechanisms. These may be mediation-based, adjudicative or follow other culturally appropriate and rights-compatible processes – or involve some combination of these –depending on the issues concerned, any public interest involved, and the potential needs of the parties. To ensure their effectiveness, they should meet the criteria set out in Principle 31.
National human rights institutions have a particularly important role to play in this regard.
As with judicial mechanisms, States should consider ways to address any imbalances between the parties to business-related human rights claimsand any additional barriers to access faced by individuals from groups or populations at heightened risk of vulnerability or marginalization.
Non-state-based grievance mechanisms
28. States should consider ways to facilitate access to effective non State based grievance mechanisms dealing with business-related human rights harms.
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Commentary
One category of non-State-based grievance mechanisms encompasses those administered by a business enterprise alone or with stakeholders, by an industry association or a multi-stakeholder group. They are non-judicial, but may use adjudicative, dialogue-based or other culturally appropriate and rights-compatible processes. These mechanisms may offer particular benefits such as speed of access and remediation, reduced costs and/or transnational reach.
Another category comprises regional and international human rights bodies. These have dealt most often with alleged violations by States of their obligations to respect human rights. However, some have also dealt with the failure of a State to meet its duty to protect against human rights abuse by business enterprises.
States can play a helpful role in raising awareness of, or otherwise facilitating access to, such options, alongside the mechanisms provided by States themselves.
29. To make it possible for grievances to be addressed early and remediated directly, business enterprises should establish or participate in effective operational-level grievance mechanisms for individuals and communities who may be adversely impacted.
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Commentary
Operational-level grievance mechanisms are accessible directly to individuals and communities who may be adversely impacted by a business enterprise. They are typically administered by enterprises, alone or in collaboration with others, including relevant stakeholders. They may also be provided through recourse to a mutually acceptable external expert or body. They do not require that those bringing a complaint first access other means of recourse. They can engage the business enterprise directly in assessing the issues and seeking remediation of any harm.
Operational-level grievance mechanisms perform two key functions regarding the responsibility of business enterprises to respect human rights.
- First, they support the identification of adverse human rights impacts as a part of an enterprise’s ongoing human rights due diligence. They do so by providing a channel for those directly impacted by the enterprise’s operations to raise concerns when they believe they are being or will be adversely impacted. By analysing trends and patterns in complaints, business enterprises can also identify systemic problems and adapt their practices accordingly;
- Second, these mechanisms make it possible for grievances, once identified, to be addressed and for adverse impacts to be remediated early and directly by the business enterprise, thereby preventing harms from compounding and grievances from escalating.
Such mechanisms need not require that a complaint or grievance amount to an alleged human rights abuse before it can be raised, but specifically aim to identify any legitimate concerns of those who may be adversely impacted. If those concerns are not identified and addressed, they may over time escalate into more major disputes and human rights abuses.
Operational-level grievance mechanisms should reflect certain criteria to ensure their effectiveness in practice (Principle 31). These criteria can be met through many different forms of grievance mechanism according to the demands of scale, resource, sector, culture and other parameters.
Operational-level grievance mechanisms can be important complements to wider stakeholder engagement and collective bargaining processes, but cannot substitute for either. They should not be used to undermine the role of legitimate trade unions in addressing labour-related disputes, nor to preclude access to judicial or other non-judicial grievance mechanisms.
30. Industry, multi-stakeholder and other collaborative initiatives that are based on respect for human rights-related standards should ensure that effective grievance mechanisms are available.
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Commentary
Human rights-related standards are increasingly reflected in commitments undertaken by industry bodies, multi-stakeholder and other collaborative initiatives, through codes of conduct, performance standards, global framework agreements between trade unions and transnational corporations, and similar undertakings.
Such collaborative initiatives should ensure the availability of effective mechanisms through which affected parties or their legitimate representatives can raise concerns when they believe the commitments in question have not been met. The legitimacy of such initiatives may be put at risk if they do not provide for such mechanisms. The mechanisms could be at the level of individual members, of the collaborative initiative, or both.
These mechanisms should provide for accountability and help enable the remediation of adverse human rights impacts.
EFFECTIVENESS CRITERIA FOR NON-JUDICIAL GRIEVANCE MECHANISMS
31. In order to ensure their effectiveness, non-judicial grievance mechanisms, both State-based and non-State-based, should be:
Legitimate:
Enabling trust from the stakeholder groups for whose use they are intended, and being accountable for the fair conduct of grievance processes.
Accessible:
Being known to all stakeholder groups for whose use they are intended, and providing adequate assistance for those who may face particular barriers to access.
Predictable:
Providing a clear and known procedure with an indicative time frame for each stage, and clarity on the types of process and outcome available and means of monitoring implementation.
Equitable:
Seeking to ensure that aggrieved parties have reasonable access to sources of information, advice and expertise necessary to engage in a grievance process on fair, informed and respectful terms.
Transparent:
Keeping parties to a grievance informed about its progress, and providing sufficient information about the mechanism’s performance to build confidence in its effectiveness and meet any public interest at stake.
Rights-compatible:
Ensuring that outcomes and remedies accord with internationally recognized human rights.
A source of continuous learning:
Drawing on relevant measures to identify lessons for improving the mechanism and preventing future grievances and harms.
Operational-level mechanisms should also be:
Based on engagement and dialogue:
Consulting the stakeholder groups for whose use they are intended on their design and performance, and focusing on dialogue as the means to address and resolve grievances.
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Commentary
A grievance mechanism can only serve its purpose if the people it is intended to serve know about it, trust it and are able to use it. These criteria provide a benchmark for designing, revising or assessing a non-judicial grievance mechanism to help ensure that it is effective in practice. Poorly designed or implemented grievance mechanisms can risk compounding a sense of grievance amongst affected stakeholders by heightening their sense of disempowerment and disrespect by the process.
The first seven criteria apply to any State-based or non-State-based, adjudicative or dialogue-based mechanism. The eighth criterion is specific to operational-level mechanisms that business enterprises help administer.
The term “grievance mechanism” is used here as a term of art. The term itself may not always be appropriate or helpful when applied to a specific mechanism, but the criteria for effectiveness remain the same. Commentary on the specific criteria follows:
- Stakeholders for whose use a mechanism is intended must trust it if they are to choose to use it. Accountability for ensuring that the parties to a grievance process cannot interfere with its fair conduct is typically one important factor in building stakeholder trust;
- Barriers to access may include a lack of awareness of the mechanism, language, literacy, costs, physical location and fears of reprisal;
- In order for a mechanism to be trusted and used, it should provide public information about the procedure it offers. Time frames for each stage should be respected wherever possible, while allowing that flexibility may sometimes be needed;
- In grievances or disputes between business enterprises and affected stakeholders, the latter frequently have much less access to information and expert resources, and often lack the financial resources to pay for them. Where this imbalance is not redressed, it can reduce both the achievement and perception of a fair process and make it harder to arrive at durable solutions;
- Communicating regularly with parties about the progress of individual grievances can be essential to retaining confidence in the process. Providing transparency about the mechanism’s performance to wider stakeholders, through statistics, case studies or more detailed information about the handling of certain cases, can be important to demonstrate its legitimacy and retain broad trust. At the same time, confidentiality of the dialogue between parties and of individuals’ identities should be provided where necessary;
- Grievances are frequently not framed in terms of human rights and many do not initially raise human rights concerns. Regardless, where outcomes have implications for human rights, care should be taken to ensure that they are in line with internationally recognized human rights;
- Regular analysis of the frequency, patterns and causes of grievances can enable the institution administering the mechanism to identify and influence policies, procedures or practices that should be altered to prevent future harm;
- For an operational-level grievance mechanism, engaging with affected stakeholder groups about its design and performance can help to ensure that it meets their needs, that they will use it in practice, and that there is a shared interest in ensuring its success.
- Since a business enterprise cannot, with legitimacy, both be the subject of complaints and unilaterally determine their outcome, these mechanisms should focus on reaching agreed solutions through dialogue. Where adjudication is needed, this should be provided by a legitimate, independent third-party mechanism.