Overview


Building capacity and capability among the people in your business is critical to integrating human rights into your business.  The best strategies, policies, processes and procedures will be undermined without getting this right – risk will be created, not reduced - and decisions will be made that undermine the intent of the business. The nature of human rights challenges is that they can occur in the moment, at the ‘coal face’, sometimes without warning and in the course of day-to-day business operations. The correct sensibility, knowledge and training are critical in this context.

This section provides guidance on how to develop the capacity and capability of your business to identify and respond effectively to human rights risks and opportunities. The intention of this section is to highlight various ways in which existing and new capability and capacity can strengthen other elements of the business system. In this section we span issues from introductory human rights training to the more complex issue of business culture.





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Steps

  1. Understand how human rights can be embedded into your business culture
  2. Build relationships across your company and with external groups
  3. Review the different types of training available, select appropriate training programme and identify target groups
  4. Integrate human rights into your internal and external communications      
 

Key Messages

  • Integrating human rights into your business is no different from implementing other change processes – work with the momentum, styles, and culture of your organisation
  • The impact of strategies, policies and processes are limited and even misleading without continuous improvement in capacity and capability
  • Training is critical and can take many forms including basic knowledge transfer, working with dilemmas and experiential learning 
  • Investing consistently in capacity and capability throughout your organisation is the best way to manage risks and seize opportunities

Benefits

  • Improved risk management due to early identification and then prevention of risk
  • Distributed ownership resulting in less time and resources invested from the core of the business to manage issues that are best managed and resolved by local business leaders
  • Increased employee satisfaction and performance due to an appreciation of working with a business that integrates ethics, values and a respect for human rights into day-to-day activity
  • Recognition of good corporate citizenship and leadership through advocacy and public commitments in the area of human rights
The Guide for Integrating Human Rights into Business Management is developed by: