Our Services

We help you and your team understand and meet your responsibilities with respect to human rights. We adapt our services and products to the specific needs of your company and take into account different maturity levels of human rights due diligence management across departments, subsidiaries, and supply chains. Our solutions ensure that you conduct business in line with international standards and frameworks on business and human rights.

HUMAN RIGHTS DUE DILIGENCE
MANAGEMENT SERVICES

Establishing Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) management systems for your company is our core business. We help you develop and implement a systematic approach to identify and manage any human rights risks. This entails the following steps, which can be performed separately or consecutively:

Risk analysis and impact assessment

Human rights risk analysis:

  • Conducting tailored risk analyses to identify and assess the human rights risks at corporate, country, sector, supply chain or product level; where applicable, through our set of research methodology and databases, including the use of our Country Risk Register, a country-specific database that highlights the human rights risks most relevant to our client and enables them to address the most salient issues
  • Developing data-driven tools to identify, prioritise, and monitor human rights risks over time, action plans to manage the identified risks, and systems of consequences to take the adequate steps according to risk level

In-depth human rights risk assessment:

  • Research and investigation into specific allegations of human rights violations of specific parts of the value chain

Human rights impact assessment (HRIA):

  • Identifying the impact of business on rights-holders through research and data gathering from the ground, for example through interviews, workers voice technology, or roundtables
  • Developing assessment frameworks tailored to specific needs of our client and based on applicable laws, international standards, and civil society expectations
  • Connecting the findings to recommendations and roadmaps for managing and mitigating adverse impacts
  • Leveraging our extensive network to build bridges between corporations, rights-holders, and state actors to effect change for people impacted by business activities

Löning Country Risk Register is a database available to our clients. It covers 230+ countries and 8 core risk categories and generates a heat map highlighting the most challenging locations and issues the client needs to address.

More information

Gap assessment

Identifying the gaps between company’s existing policies, management systems, and practices and:

  • Applicable human rights due diligence laws (e.g., EU regulations directed at corporations or financial market participants, national laws such as the French Duty of Vigilance, the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Law, or US trade regulations)
  • International standards (e.g., UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, OECD Guidance for Multinational Corporations etc.)
  • Sector standards

Identifying areas for improvement, providing strategic and practical recommendations to close gaps, and developing a due diligence roadmap with concrete steps for action that allows for integration of solutions into company’s existing management systems.

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Policies and governance

Policy development:

  • Developing, drafting, and revising human rights-related policies tailored to the specific needs and challenges of company and its industry, such as human rights policy statements, child rights policy statements, and codes of conduct for employees or suppliers

Governance structures:

  • Creating effective governance structures that embed human rights in all key processes
  • Making recommendations on cross-functional responsibilities and internal reporting structures, providing operational support to management and board in implementing policy commitments

Risk management & mitigation

Defining and implementing adequate measures to mitigate the human rights risks including:

  • Risk management systems to address risks connected to the different
    departments such as security, human resources, procurement, M&A, etc.
  • Supplier management systems to address risks, including systems of consequences with self-assessment questionnaires, audit programmes and “beyond audit” solutions
  • Capacity building & training for own employees and suppliers

Grievance mechanisms

  • Supporting in the conceptualization and development of adequate grievance mechanisms in line with applicable regulations and/or UNGPs or in the participation in existing grievance mechanisms
  • Assessing compatibility of existing grievance mechanisms with applicable laws and standards, providing guidance on closing gaps
  • Developing internal corporate processes for receiving and managing human rights-related complaints
Grievance-Mechanisms

Through our joint solution with Ulula, we build effective, inclusive and accessible grievance mechanisms. Learn more about our innovative workers’ voice technology: mariana@loening.org

Performance measurement and reporting

Measuring human rights performance:

  • Establishing structures to measure management systems’ performance via KPIs that enable the assessment of management maturity and related outputs
  • Revising and improving existing company frameworks, questionnaires, and protocols for assessing human rights performance

Reporting human rights performance:

  • Establishing reporting structures according to legal requirements, standards, and best practices
  • Developing human rights reports for ensuring transparency and communicating due diligence performance to internal and external stakeholders
  • Supporting companies in data identification and collection for the reporting of human rights performance
  • Highlighting critical insights that will help to drive future performance

COMPLEMENTARY SERVICES

In addition to our core business of establishing human rights due diligence management systems, we offer the following services:

Country and sector-specific research and briefings

We provide decision makers with in-depth research on difficult industry or country-specific situations. Our researchers are highly qualified and have produced numerous studies on business and human rights questions in challenging environments. We provide the following services to our clients:

  • Research on public policy, country-specific risks, and political developments to help companies understand and navigate the human rights context they are operating in
  • Insights, benchmarks and recommendations on good practice examples and improvement measures
  • Customized country reports, industry insights and policy briefings that summarize research-based evidence and present key policy messages and expert recommendations relating to business practice

Our research findings are directed at internal functions and executive management.

Legal monitoring

Legal developments can be abrupt und sometimes unexpected for companies. Understanding their implications for business operations is key to avoiding risks. Our legal team is routinely monitoring legal developments that impact human rights obligations of companies, including court rulings in key markets, and providing our clients with regular updates on how changes in the legal landscape can impact their business.

Executive briefings

Directors and officers need to understand legislative developments and demands by clients and investors regarding human rights as well as their impact on business operations and supply chain management. Our executive briefings are highly customised and succinctly present the key information that is relevant for decisionmakers.

Capacity building

Enabling both your workforce and your suppliers to fully understand their company’s impact and to mitigate risks in a timely manner benefits more than just people and the planet – it also improves your company’s risk management, making it more agile and resilient for the future. Under the Löning Academy umbrella, we deliver standard and customised human rights training to employees, board members, and suppliers to expand knowledge and capabilities, reach alignment across teams, and strengthen human rights outcomes. Our training programmes can be delivered both in person and online and in various formats:

  • Short informational sessions
  • Company-wide e-learning modules
  • Function-specific training programmes
  • Supplier workshops
  • Executive briefings

To learn more about Löning Academy training programmes click here.

Watch the sustainable tourism training we delievered to Sri Lankan business owners as part of the Sustainable Tourism Initiative and in collaboration with AHK Sri Lanka and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

Stakeholder engagement and facilitation of dialogue

Meaningful stakeholder engagement is a key success factor in conducting credible and effective human rights due diligence. Thanks to our extensive international network of stakeholder groups and partners, we are able to offer our clients the following support:

  • Coordinating dialogue and external consultation processes that are inclusive of rightsholders to identify and track needs, expectations, and perceptions in connection with human rights
  • Coordinating internal engagement with corporate functions to raise awareness and reach alignment across company
  • Providing guidance on company’s public position in crises involving high public pressure and media attention
  • Developing innovative strategies and platforms that utilize digital technology to engage with stakeholders
  • Mediating perspectives held by diverse stakeholder groups to improve human rights conditions

Human rights due diligence in the M&A context

Mergers and acquisitions of companies involve inherent and often unquantifiable human rights risks. Incorporating human rights into the M&A due diligence process informs the buyer’s decision-making and may impact the valuation of the transaction. If unidentified and unmanaged, human rights issues linked to the target company’s operations or supply chains may give rise to real and significant risks in the form of reputational harm, regulatory penalties, and legal costs following the closing of the transaction.

Conducting human rights due diligence as part of the M&A process will help the buyer understand its risk exposure, plan risk management and mitigation, integrate internal processes post-closing and ultimately, preserve the value and sustainability of the asset. On the other hand, if conducted as vendor due diligence, it will provide the seller with a greater comfort in relation to the target’s human rights risks and with the ability to mitigate identified issues that may impact valuation before closing. Overall, effective human rights due diligence facilitates the speedy, efficient, and successful sale of the target and its assets.

As part of our human rights due diligence services in the M&A context, we identify and assess the target’s human rights risks, its existing risk management processes and its capacity to manage these risks. Thanks to our cross-industry knowledge on human rights risks and companies’ preparedness to manage such risks, we have mastered the art of asking questions and obtaining the necessary information and documentation from the target. We know where in the data room to look to detect hidden risks and which factors to consider when prioritizing the focus of risk assessments.

Our advisory team of human rights experts works at the pace of the transaction, coordinates closely with your M&A and legal teams, and maintains absolute confidentiality throughout the due diligence process.

Human rights due diligence in the ESG investment context

ESG due diligence has become an integral part of investment decisions, but it often concentrates on the environmental risk factors. However, incorporating human rights risks into ESG due diligence the building block for a truly responsible investment. Effective human rights risk assessment is essential to understand the monetary risk that each new investment poses. It is also required by an increasing number of regulations such as the EU Taxonomy.

Investor engagement with portfolio companies to implement human rights can take different forms. Setting up adequate risk management systems is key to improving the human rights performance of portfolio companies.

As part of this service, we help investors establish risk management systems to screen investee companies for human rights risks and management maturity. We conduct human rights impact assessments and establish adequate human rights due diligence processes that will help qualify investment projects as sustainable. We engage with the management of portfolio companies on your behalf to improve their compliance with human rights standards.