Corporate Human Rights Benchmark: Investor Guidance

This guidance for investors elaborates on key findings from the World Benchmarking Alliance’s fifth iteration of the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark. Under finding are a series of assessment questions that investors can use in their stewardship activities. These questions, supported by our findings, can help investors ask targeted questions to meaningfully discuss human rights management in companies.

These questions are meant to provide a starting point and may require additional research and context in some cases. The examples of leading practices could be used in conjunction with this guidance document to inform users about what good disclosure looks like on specific areas of our assessment.

About the 2022 and 2023 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark

The Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB) assesses the most influential companies operating in high-risk sectors on their human rights performance. The benchmark looks at the policies, processes and practices companies have in place to systematise their human rights approach.

We published the fifth iteration of the benchmark in two stages. In November 2022 we published our assessment of 127 companies in the food and agricultural products, ICT manufacturing and automotive manufacturing sectors. In November 2023 we published our assessment of 110 companies from the apparel and extractives sectors.

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