Approach

A management process, not a one-off audit

Effective HRDD connects governance, impact assessment, stakeholder engagement, operational decisions, remedy, tracking, and communication in a continuous cycle.

A structured HRDD process connecting assessment, engagement, field action, monitoring, and learning

Design principles

Start with impact on people

The process is proportionate to risk and designed around decisions the company and its business partners can actually implement.

1Severity before convenience

Prioritise scale, scope, irremediability, and likelihood rather than only commercial exposure or easy-to-measure issues.

2Meaningful engagement

Include affected and potentially affected people, worker representatives, community organizations, and specialist perspectives.

3Ownership inside the business

Translate findings into responsibilities across operations, HR, procurement, security, legal, finance, and contractor management.

4Remedy and recurrence prevention

Address harm where appropriate, test outcomes with affected people, and change systems that allowed the impact to occur.

Due-diligence cycle

Six steps with decision gates

Each stage produces a decision-ready record rather than an isolated report.

Embed

Mandate, policy, governance, resources, and escalation.

Scope

Context, relationships, stakeholders, and severe-risk pathways.

Assess

Evidence, rights-holder input, causes, and leverage.

Act

Prevention, mitigation, cessation, and remedy design.

Track

Implementation, outcomes, recurrence, and verification.

Communicate

Methods, limitations, progress, and unresolved issues.

Stakeholder engagement

Engagement must be safe enough to be useful

Map formal organizations and informal networks before selecting participants.
Assess language, accessibility, representation, retaliation, gender, migration, and digital-security risks.
Explain purpose, information use, confidentiality limits, and what the process can change.
Separate management interviews from worker and community engagement where power may suppress evidence.
Provide feedback on how concerns were understood, acted on, referred, or left unresolved.

Workers, communities, local organizations, project teams, and information channels mapped around an overseas project — Engagement design begins with context and representation, not a generic stakeholder list.

Operational, worker, contractor, and stakeholder evidence organized into a traceable decision system — Evidence is organized for action, protection, and later verification.

Evidence architecture

Keep the chain from source to decision visible

Minimum decision record

Issue, affected group, source and confidence, severity rationale, business relationship, owner, action, deadline, safeguard, status, verification method, and unresolved question.

Sensitive identities and case details are separated from management reporting. Public communication should never create new risk for workers, communities, defenders, or complainants.

Reference framework

International standards informing the model

These references guide practice design. Applicability of specific laws depends on jurisdiction, entity, value chain, and facts.

Define the decision before expanding the assessment

A bounded diagnostic identifies the most material evidence and engagement gaps.

Discuss an HRDD diagnostic