Principle 3 of the Women’s Empowerment Principles encourages companies to ensure the health, including sexual and reproductive health, of all workers. Investing in women’s health not only benefits employees and surrounding communities, but it can also have a positive social and economic effect on the private sector. In ensuring that workers have safe working conditions and available health services, companies establish healthier staff, better relationships, and in many cases higher Return-on-investment (ROI). This webinar highlights the benefits of investing in women's health, real life examples from Levi Strauss & Company and Merck, and strategies that businesses can implement to respect and support women’s health.

Initially developed in 2000 as a common framework for UN-Business collaboration, the Guidelines apply to the UN Secretariat as well as separately administered organs, Funds and Programmes. The Guidelines, developed in 2000, revised and reissued in 2009, and further revised in 2015, provided a framework on a common and systemic approach to partnerships between the Organization and the business sector, placing greater emphasis on transparency, coherence, impact, accountability and due diligence.

Integrating human rights considerations into corporate crisis management is one way that companies can seek to identify, prevent and address adverse impacts. Some companies are broadening their crisis management policies and procedures to explicitly address adverse human rights impacts, consistent with the UN Global Compact Principles and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This Good Practice Note identifies five good practices for integrating human rights considerations into crisis planning, the first phase of effective crisis management. Note: Human rights considerations during the subsequent phases of crisis response and recovery are beyond the scope of this note.

The UN Global Compact Bulletin is designed to keep participants up to date on news, actions you can take, resources and events. Participants are encouraged to look to this monthly communication for important information. Please note that actions and events are intended for Global Compact stakeholders, unless otherwise indicated. The Bulletin is published in English, French, Spanish and Chinese.

The UN Global Compact Bulletin is designed to keep participants up to date on news, actions you can take, resources and events. Participants are encouraged to look to this monthly communication for important information. Please note that actions and events are intended for Global Compact stakeholders, unless otherwise indicated. The Bulletin is published in English, French, Spanish and Chinese.

Migrant workers are often susceptible to unfair recruitment and hiring practices, leaving them highly vulnerable to exploitation. For many, the debt burden they carry from excessive recruitment fees and migration costs exacerbates this vulnerability and can lead to debt bondage and forced labour. This note calls on business to take action to address such exploitative practices and their associated risk to labour abuse. References to relevant international standards and links to multi-stakeholder initiatives and additional resources are included to provide further guidance.

The UN Global Compact Bulletin is designed to keep participants up to date on news, actions you can take, resources and events. Participants are encouraged to look to this monthly communication for important information. Please note that actions and events are intended for Global Compact stakeholders, unless otherwise indicated. The Bulletin is published in English, French, Spanish and Chinese.

Provides guidance on how businesses and business schools can collaborate to co-create solutions for sustainability challenges. The toolkit and brochure feature inspiring examples of partnerships, categorized under five themes: influencing, training, collaborating, researching and consulting.

ILO experts on skills and employability explore the contribution of enterprises to building a skilled workforce in their countries of operation. The discussion focuses on common challenges companies face in developing and implementing a skills and employability policy and practical examples of private sector engagement in skills systems.

The COE Template is an easy-to-use web-based template with examples.

Various stakeholder groups are mounting calls for Boards of Directors to take sustainability into account while adhering to their legal duties to shareholders. This puts questions about fiduciary duty front and center. Careful legal analyses of such questions have been prepared over the past year by law firms all over the world. The collection of memoranda below will inform and enrich discussion among Board directors, and the lawyers who counsel them, about how changing circumstances near and far are affecting their ability to meet fiduciary duty requirements. 

 Prof. Robert G. Eccles and Tim Youmans of Harvard Business School have led this collaboration which included the UN Global Compact, the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Sustainable Development and PRI, Their aim was to gather legal perspectives from law firms in a wide range of countries. Each participating law firm used a standard research template developed by Linklaters in the UK to structure their respective legal memo. The legal memos are posted below with the permission of the participating firms. To further grow the research, enquiries from law firms in countries that do not already have a legal memo are welcome. If you do not see your country listed and want to know if one is being prepared, please contact Ingvild Soerensen (soerensen@unglobalcompact.org).

This webinar presents the experiences of signatories of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a groundbreaking legally binding agreement signed in May 2013 to make garment factories safe. Ensuring that workers throughout global value chains can work in safe places is an important element of supply chain sustainability. This webinar addresses how companies can work together with trade unions and governments to contribute to occupational health and safety throughout their supply chains. Representatives of major brands and global trade unions presented their experiences.