99% of Businesses Neglecting Social Sustainability Commitments

 Pretty damning piece from Edie:

'A sobering picture': 99% of businesses neglecting social sustainability commitments

28 January 2022, source edie newsroom

New research has warned that 99% of large businesses are failing to adequately address key social sustainability issues, including human rights, working hours, ethical conduct and fair pay.

While most companies in the SDG2000 had commitments to health and safety, just 4% were able to disclose aspects such as paying workers living wages

The World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) has this week launched its Social Transformation Baseline Assessment of 1,000 companies from its SDG2000, some of the largest organisations in the world across the major sectors.

Of these 1,000 companies, the WBA found that just 1% meet the principles and practices of the Alliance’s Core Social Indicators (CSIs). These 18 indicators measure companies’ responsibility to respect human rights, their role in providing and promoting decent work, and their ethical conduct in areas such as lobbying and taxation.

More than half of the companies examine received scores of 0-5 out of 20 across these metrics. In particular, organisations are failing to provide “decent work”, which the WBA defines as fair approaches to health and safety, living wages and working hours.

The WBA found that while most companies in the SDG2000 had commitments to health and safety, just 4% were able to disclose aspects such as paying workers living wages.

Additionally, the research found that 78% of companies scored zero across three human rights indicators. Even though more than half of the companies examined had commitments to human rights, “far fewer” were able to demonstrate actions to enshrine these commitments.

With the 2030 deadline approaching for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the WBA is warning that companies are neglecting key social sustainability issues.

The WBA’s social transformation lead Dan Neale said: “WBA’s research paints a sobering picture, with 99% of companies failing to demonstrate they truly value people.

“Businesses are, overall, on course to entrench, rather than end, the social inequalities that pose a global systemic risk and their inability to put people at the heart of their thinking also undermines efforts to address the risks of climate change and biodiversity loss.”