The Improving Wages to Advance Decent Work in Supply Chains microsite highlights lessons learned and best practices from companies and organizations on tackling low pay in supply chains. The microsite is not a blueprint for living wages in global supply chains but provides a strategic logic to support companies’ decision making, to devise their own realistic, integrated strategy on tackling low pay in supply chains and chart their way forward with a plan of concrete implementation actions that enable their commitments. For more resources on living wage, please refer to our living wage webpage. (https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/our-work/livingwages)

Developed by the United Nations Global Compact, UNICEF and Save the Children – the Children’s Rights and Business Principles are the first comprehensive set of principles to guide companies on the full range of actions they can take in the workplace, marketplace and community to respect and support children’s rights. While the business and human rights agenda has evolved significantly in recent years, a child rights perspective has not yet been explicitly addressed. (https://childrenandbusiness.org/)

Highlights the central role businesses play in determining whether or not global temperature increases can be limited to 1.5°C by 2050, and identifies key issues that businesses should consider when assessing climate change and human rights - such as climate refugees, human trafficking, litigation hotspots, investor demands, and cost of inaction. 

Businesses are facing increasing demands from their stakeholders to be more transparent about their practices and exposure to risks related to their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Pushing against the trend for more transparency are the costs of data collection, requirements for assurance, exposure to legal jeopardy, and legitimate perceptions of reputational risk. This report navigates this ‘transparency dilemma’, to build a better understanding of the risk/return profile of transparency and thereby help companies to balance competing interests.

The Decent Work Toolkit for Sustainable Procurement will enable companies, procurement professionals and suppliers to develop a common understanding on how to advance decent work through purchasing decisions and scaling up efforts to improve lives around the globe. With a focus on trust and transparency, the Decent Work Toolkit for Sustainable Procurement is publicly available to all and contains real-life examples of buyers and suppliers jointly addressing decent work concerns in global supply chains.

Provides guidance on the evolving business and human rights legal landscape and the consequent legal considerations that apply to multinational companies. Today, multinational companies must navigate increasingly complex human rights obligations, identify human rights risk in supply chains through due diligence, and take steps to mitigate such risks or make public disclosures. This topic is relevant to professionals tasked with embedding sustainability and human rights considerations in their business strategy. This report was developed by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP with input from the participants of the UN Global Compact Decent Work in Global Supply Chains Action Platform.

Financial institutions are the key to unlocking the system-wide change needed to reach net-zero emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures. The Science Based Targets initiative’s new framework allows financial institutions – including banks, investors, insurance companies, pension funds and others – to set science-based targets to align their lending and investment activities with the Paris Agreement.

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has launched a process to develop the first science-based global standard for corporate net-zero target setting, to ensure that companies’ net-zero targets translate into action that is consistent with achieving a net-zero world by no later than 2050. The paper lays out the conceptual foundations for corporate net-zero target setting, including clarity on what it means for companies to reach net-zero emissions, analysis of existing net-zero target setting practices, assessment of strategies that are consistent with achieving a net-zero economy, and initial recommendations for science-based net-zero goals. The conceptual foundations discussed in the paper will be translated into detailed guidelines and criteria to be developed by the initiative as part of a continued multi-stakeholder process.

Provides an overview of the current state of the business school rankings and suggests possible changes to help align business school education with the needs of the 21st century. It includes 20 actions to improve evaluation and ranking and encourage “a race to the top” in business education.

The publication highlights the potential role of social dialogue in fostering stability, equity, productivity, sustainable enterprises and inclusive growth. It also showcases some successful examples.

Provides a summary and highlights of the inaugural SDG Investment Forum in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Investors, governments, and other stakeholders are increasingly demanding that companies demonstrate sustainable strategies aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This guide seeks to support companies looking to integrate the SDGs into their financial strategy and business model. A credible SDG strategy allows a company to clearly communicate its impact, facilitates easier access to the growing market for SDG financing, and connects investors with a pipeline of potential opportunities to address the SDG investment gap.  This publication is available in English and Spanish