This theme measures the extent to which a company demonstrates an understanding of its suppliers and its workforce by disclosing relevant information such as supplier names or sourcing countries and assessing and disclosing forced labor risks across its supply chains.
Apparel & Footwear
Half of the benchmarked companies (49%) disclosed a first-tier supplier list, and 19% disclosed a second-tier supplier list. It is positive that the majority of companies (76%) disclosed conducting a human rights risk assessment on their supply chains. However, transparency remained patchy; only 19% disclosed the forced labor risks identified across different tiers of their supply chains.
Food & Beverage
Traceability and Supply Chain Transparency are areas in which companies in the sector have consistently performed poorly. The average score is 20, and no company demonstrates comprehensive efforts across commodities. Companies perform better on conducting human rights risk assessments in their supply chains, with 70% of them disclosing at least limited efforts to address this key aspect of due diligence as part of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. However, there are high risks in the sector, and only 42% of the companies provide detail on this process, highlighting that a significant number are failing to conduct thorough due diligence.
Information & Communications Technology
Traceability & Risk Assessment is among the themes on which some of the strongest improvements could be seen since the 2018 benchmark. However, the number of companies conducting human rights risk assessments in their supply chains remains at less than half of the companies in the benchmark, despite this being a key part of due diligence in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Transparency on first-tier suppliers also remains limited.