A
t Shift, we work with companies to put respect for people at the heart of how business gets done, helping them to build the strategy, systems, and capacity they need to fully embed human rights due diligence.
Our founders helped draft the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). As a team, we combine deep technical expertise with real-world experience to guide companies through complex human rights challenges.
Why companies choose Shift
Our people, our edge – Decades of hands-on experience in human rights due diligence across industries and geographies
Shift’s highly skilled experts have many years of experience in applying human rights due diligence in practical contexts.
Shift’s team is well-equipped to offer guidance on navigating complex human rights challenges, with expertise in areas including supply chain management, labor rights, child rights, living wages, stakeholder engagement, assessing community impacts, training and capacity building, grievance mechanisms, climate-related human rights risks, environmental and social risk management, reporting, and due diligence in conflict-affected areas.
Many team members have direct experience of implementing human rights due diligence within companies, while others have worked for trade unions, NGOs, or multilateral institutions, shaping human rights policy and practice.
Our company partners benefit by tapping into a wealth of experience for valuable insights and perspectives that can help them effectively address human rights risks within their operations.
Grounded in reality – Advice tailored to your business model, value chain and operating context
Our work is grounded in practical experience, and a deep understanding of how businesses work. When we work with companies, the first step we take is to understand the business and its operating context so that the advice we give is based in reality, and actionable
Connected and influential – Access to global peers, civil society leaders and the latest policy developments
Shift is highly respected for its expertise, grounded in the international standard of the UNGPs. This enables us to help the companies we work with to understand and respond to the latest developments in business and human rights by connecting them with the right people, including in peer companies as well as in NGOs and trade unions.
As Shift is an active participant in public and private standard-setting initiatives, we are able to equip companies with the knowledge and understanding they need to prepare for evolving regulatory demands. We use the insights we gain from our work with companies to influence the development of standards to ensure that they are as consistent as possible with the UNGPs, impactful for affected stakeholders and workable for business.
Mission-driven and independent – Impartial guidance from a non-profit partner committed to practical, lasting change
As a non-profit, mission-driven organisation, Shift is uniquely placed to be a trusted partner to companies, providing impartial advice, and acting as a critical friend when needed.
Business Impact Program (BIP)
Our flagship program for committed companies, raising the bar for credible human rights due diligence
Shift’s Business Impact Program brings together committed companies at the forefront of human rights practice. Together, we harness the collective experience and knowledge of leading companies to find innovative approaches to entrenched and emerging human rights challenges. By cutting through the noise and focusing on what really matters, the program helps companies strengthen the quality and credibility of their human rights due diligence, giving them confidence in both their internal decision-making and external reporting and engagement. And through these trusted exchanges, we generate insights that we then use to influence emerging standards and practices that will shape the business and human rights landscape now and into the future.
As part of this program, your company will:
- Collaborate in expert-led practice groups – Work in small groups of committed companies to apply fresh thinking and develop new approaches to the most pressing human rights challenges.
- Build internal capability – Through tailored sessions, practical tools, and targeted learning experiences.
Today’s challenges demand more than just technical know-how; they require shared understanding and coordinated action across teams. The BIP helps build capacity across a wide range of roles – from sustainability and legal experts to operations, finance and internal audit – strengthening your company’s ability to embed respect for people at the core of how it does business.
- Explore solutions with global peers – Access safe, facilitated spaces to share real challenges and test new solutions.
By participating in our thematic workshops and practice groups, you’ll engage with global peers and Shift’s expert advisors to stay sharp, relevant, and resilient.
Shift’s Business Impact Program comprises:
- Participation in Practice Groups – Focussing on shared challenges such as supply chain due diligence, impact measurement and the nexus between human rights and climate
- Flagship thematic workshop – An annual deep dive with peers into the most pressing topics in business and human rights
- Topical webinars – Periodic information exchanges on current topics
- Human Rights Foundations Course –Designed for both practitioners and leaders from other functions
- 10 days of bilateral advisory support – Delivered by Shift’s expert team, tailored to your priorities in implementing human rights due diligence
- Preferential advisory rates – For any additional support beyond your core membership
Best for: Companies with a proactive human rights due diligence program, strong leadership commitment, and internal capacity to engage
Companies that join the BIP:
- Have a proactive human rights due diligence program that is supported by company leadership
- Engage in peer-learning by sharing real-world practices, successes and setbacks
- Are part of a community of practice generating insights that can inform the development and implementation of policy as well as practice, helping find solutions to complex human rights challenges
Current participants
- AB InBev (Joined in 2019)
- ABN AMRO (Joined in 2014)
- Allied Irish Banks (Joined in 2022)
- Chanel (Joined in 2019)
- De Beers Group (Joined in 2021)
- Equinor (Joined in 2015)
- Ericsson (Joined in 2012)
- Ferrero (Joined in 2018)
- Gran Tierra Energy (Joined in 2021)
- Heineken (Joined in 2024)
- Henkel (Joined in 2025)
- Inditex (Joined in 2018)
- ING (Joined in 2021)
- Johnson & Johnson (Joined in 2020)
- L’Oréal (Joined in 2020)
- PepsiCo (Joined in 2015)
- Starbucks (Joined in 2026)
- Tetra Pak (Joined in 2022)
Advisory Services – Tailored support for specific challenges
Shift’s experts work with companies to co-design an action-oriented work plan that is tailored to the specific needs and challenges of the business. Shift’s mission-driven approach focuses on capacity-building to enable long-term, sustainable change.
We will help you to:
Build internal capability, not external dependency
We don’t do all the work for you — we work with you. Through 1:1 support, we strengthen your internal systems, build team capacity, and support you to embed aspects of human rights due diligence into governance, risk, audit, procurement, and reporting.
Move from compliance to credible leadership
In a fast-changing regulatory landscape, your company can’t afford to merely box-tick. Our support will help you to demonstrate serious, strategic commitment to human rights that meets multiple compliance objectives — and also builds trust with regulators, investors, and stakeholders.
Stay focused on what matters most
We help you navigate complexity, cut through competing demands, and stay focused on high-impact, risk-based actions that improve outcomes for people across your value chain.
Ground your strategy in lived experience
Our roots in civil society and our broad stakeholder networks can help ensure your human rights strategy is grounded, balanced, and informed by essential perspectives beyond the corporate lens.
Advisory Plus – Blend bespoke support with peer learning
For companies taking part in advisory projects, Advisory Plus offers:
Access to selected BIP events and webinars – Learn from global peers and Shift experts on pressing business and human rights issues
Shift’s Advisory Plus program gives companies that are accessing our advisory services the opportunity to participate in Shift’s broader business community of practice. The program enables companies to experience selected Business Impact Program events and benefit from access to expert guidance on key topics and engagement with leading companies that face the same challenges.
Participation in Human Rights Foundations Course – Expert-led online training for newer practitioners and function leaders
Small group online training sessions enable newer human rights practitioners as well as staff who are taking up human rights responsibilities in their own functional areas (e.g. Procurement, Legal) to access expert training on the fundamental steps of due diligence in a peer-learning environment.
Companies can add Advisory Plus membership to any individual project with Shift.
How we work
Shift provides support to companies – whether new to human rights or with existing human rights strategies and activities – across the full range of due diligence systems design and implementation. Whatever the specific project, our aim is always to equip companies with the tools and approaches that enable them to fully embed human rights due diligence in the business.
Salient human rights issues – risk identification and prioritization
- Informed, thorough, drawing on the knowledge and experience of company staff
- Focus on building systems and capabilities so that companies can regularly update their own salient issues
- Aim to give companies confidence in the quality and robustness of their risk identification and prioritization processes so they can form the foundation for both reporting and management of the underling issues
- Direct involvement of functional areas to secure buy-in, supported through capacity-building
- Informed through stakeholder engagement
- Co-design approach with companies based on our public knowledge products instead of proprietary methodologies
- Expanding the scope of existing due diligence efforts to cover downstream activities and emerging human rights issues
Action planning
- Guiding companies to develop time-bound action plans that are appropriate to the risks they face, oriented towards positive outcomes for people, and implementable
- Encouraging ownership of the actions by relevant internal teams
- Supporting companies to continuously build internal awareness and capability on human rights, by supporting functions and departments to embed human rights thinking in their daily activities
- Creating a consistent method that companies can use to manage potential or actual human rights impacts informed by what works and innovating where needed
Remedy and grievance mechanisms
- Focus on delivering remedy to affected stakeholders
- Ensure that grievance mechanisms function effectively as pathways to remedy and also inform the company’s own due diligence processes
- Equipping companies to identify and address situations where remedy is needed
Measurement and target setting
- Developing company-wide measurement frameworks to track progress on due diligence processes, supplier maturity, and specific salient issues
- Guidance on developing holistic strategies with root cause analyses, theories of change, targets and KPIs
- Support with setting targets and metrics for salient human rights issues, with an emphasis on tracking the effectiveness of actions taken to address impacts
- Modelling short, mid- and long-term indicators and demonstrating practical applications of maturing indicators over time
- Addressing challenges around internal and external communication, data sharing and internal buy in
Establishing supply chain due diligence management systems
- Defining a single, comprehensive methodology for identifying and assessing human rights risks in complex supply chains
- Effective implementation of risk-based due diligence at relevant tiers
- Program coherence and effective overarching governance structures
- Supplier engagement and capacity-building, with particular attention to the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
Climate Change and Human Rights
- Integrate human rights considerations into the design and periodic update of climate transition plans, supporting the development of robust and achievable plans and stronger integration across climate, environmental and social dimensions of sustainability
- Leverage human rights due diligence tools for risk identification and stakeholder engagement, to identify, prevent and manage human rights impacts linked to existing climate action plans
- Identify and assess human rights impacts associated with physical climate risks, drawing on companies’ existing climate risk analyses and models and strengthening them through a human rights lens
- Support companies to develop internal and external narratives, and associated metrics, that connect just transition objectives with business priorities and enable measurement of progress towards a transition that does not leave people behind
Whether you’re just getting started, reviewing your program, or preparing for due diligence legislation, we adapt our support to your needs:
New to human rights due diligence? We help map risks, run saliency assessments, and kick-start action planning.
- Review of existing policies and processes and how they can be used to support due diligence
- Interviews with internal stakeholders to map the key business activities and value chain and start to identify human rights risks
- Identification of and interviews with key external experts on potential risks connected to the business
- Internal awareness and capacity-building on human rights
- Cross-functional workshops to establish initial identification and prioritization of human rights risks
- Joint action planning to address the prioritized risks
- Tailored guidance on how to run future saliency assessments
Looking to deepen integration? We work with you to refresh salient issues, review policies, and expand capacity across functions.
- A salient issues refresh to identify new risks and priorities
- A human rights policy review to ensure that it continues to meet external expectations, and takes account of legislative requirements
- Expansion of human rights knowledge and capacity to functional areas responsible for implementation
Preparing for due diligence regulation? We assess your readiness, help you to align your systems with evolving legal expectations, and strengthen governance.
- Research into how current and upcoming due diligence legislation may affect the company, including through its business relationships
- Internal interviews to identify opportunities and challenges of legislation, and how these could affect business activities and relationships
- Assessment of the company’s existing approach to human rights due diligence and the extent to which it aligns with the expectations of the UNGPs as reflected in due diligence and disclosure requirements in legislation
- Recommendations for achieving a closer alignment, tailored to the company’s strategic priorities
Why it works
- Collaborative approach – Co-designed solutions built with you, not off-the-shelf models
- Capacity building focus – Strengthening your team’s skills to ensure sustainable delivery, avoiding dependency
- Stakeholder-informed – Engagement with workers, communities and experts shapes every step
- Credibility with regulators, investors, and civil society – Our guidance is anchored in our expertise in the international standard of the UNGPs
Testimonials
What Our Partners Say About Working with Us
“For years, Shift has been a trusted advisor and valued thought partner of PepsiCo. Their dedicated team of experts has helped us strengthen our human rights program, build capacity across key areas of our business and focus our efforts to implement the UN Guiding Principles in a strategic and cohesive way.”
Michele R. Thatcher, SVP CHIEF COUNSEL GLOBAL HUMAN RESOURCES – PEPSICO
“The Shift team has been a critical and constructive partner that helped us to strengthen our human rights due diligence process. This partnership was and is invaluable to make real progress and change. The Shift colleagues are professional, passionate and a pleasure to work with.”
RUTGER GOETHART, MANAGER OF INTERNATIONAL LABOUR RELATIONS – HEINEKEN
“We are proud of our partnership with Shift and of what we have been able to achieve together to respect human rights in our supply chain and beyond.”
maria morell camacho, social sustainability manager – inditex
“The work with Shift has by far been the most motivating and valuable in maintaining my belief of delivering remediation and improvement on human rights within our business and operations.”
chris grayer, head of supplier ethical compliance – next
Work with us
Be part of the global business community shaping credible business and human rights practice
Engage with experts, share challenges and test solutions with peers, and build the systems and skills your company needs — through Shift’s full portfolio of services.
Contact us at info@shiftproject.org to explore the right support for your company.
