Human rights tool enhances corporate responsibility and the SDGs

Lack of access to clean drinking water, food, education, medicine and health care. Companies and the population in developing countries are facing many different challenges that impede the access of employees and their families to an adequate standard of living, which by implication hampers the employees’ productivity in the companies that rely on their labour.

Improving people’s living standards and companies’ productivity

The new human rights based Social Impact Toolkit addresses these challenges and offers practical solutions for companies. The tool is developed by the Danish Institute for Human Rights in cooperation with the Zambia based investment and advisory firm Kukula Capital as implementing partner and a number of local companies that have participated in the pilot testing of the methodologies and tools. The tool offers practical guidance for companies on how they can improve the living standards of employees and their families and shows how these advancements may lead to enhanced employee loyalty, motivation with the effect that the productivity of the companies increases.

"It offers guidance for companies that wish to contribute to rights-based improvements of living standards of employees and their families in terms of better access to water, food, housing, education and health care. Through these improvements, the companies also promote the UN Sustainable Development Goals that call for action in these areas,” says Mads Holst Jensen, senior adviser at the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

Pilot projects show strong results

A number of the Zambian pilot companies have already made significant improvements based on the toolkit. By using the toolkit, they have assessed current living standards of employees and their families in reference to relevant international human rights standards, they have identified areas where interventions are most necessary and will the greatest impact and they have tracked the performance of the interventions as well as the effect on employee loyalty, motivation and productivity.

Some interventions have resulted in increased access to medical care, setting up simple water harvesting units on the employees’ houses and other practical improvements with significant positive impact on the living standards of the employees and their families. The improvements have led to far fewer sick days and employee turnover, increased gender equality, as well as better employee performance and company productivity. The Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU) has invested in Kukula Capital and has been part of the steering committee,that has monitored the development of the tool.

"I am convinced that the tool can be of benefit to many companies in developing countries across the globe. Particularly small and medium sized enterprises need tools that can help them contribute to the fulfillment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to comply with the human rights," Birgitte Bang Nielsen, sustainability director at IFU, says.

Practical guidelines and illustrative cases

The toolkit is developed with companies for companies and therefore offers practical guidance that works in company contexts and support the companies in all aspects and phases of the project implementation. Moreover, the toolkit presents cases describing the positive results that different companies have achieved by using the guidance. The toolkit is very adaptable and can be used to plan both low cost one-off initiatives as well as large-scale projects.