Building an equitable and resilient future for all
Our recommendations align with the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, ILO Fundamental Conventions, OECD Due Diligence Guidance and Guidelines, the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Social Transformation Framework, and Just Transition Initiative.
The global human rights and social impact landscape is moving towards increased regulatory oversight, due diligence, and mandatory reporting on the impacts organisations have on workers, suppliers, communities, and consumers. Our suite of services in Human Rights & Social Impact consultancy is designed to help corporates, funds, public administrations, and international institutions comprehensively address these challenges by assessing human rights risks and decent working conditions, remediating issues, monitoring and measuring impact, and designing bespoke social impact programs.
Our diverse team combines broad and deep human rights and social subject matter expertise with commercial and operational capabilities to help organisations at different stages implement strategies to respect human rights and deliver meaningful social impact.
Empower your organisation to realise the business value of social performance by leveraging our Social Impact and Human Rights Services. From human rights due diligence and social impact assessment to ethical trade and just transition, our services empower organisations to thrive while contributing to a world where ethical values and social responsibility take centre stage.
Trusted by
Human Rights & Social Impact Services
Strategy Development & Advisory
Companies and investors face growing expectations to show how they identify and address their human rights impacts. The regulatory landscape and reporting requirements on modern slavery and human rights and environmental due diligence, among others, are continuously evolving. Meanwhile, civil society and consumers increasingly scrutinise companies’ reporting on positive social impacts.
Drawing on our backgrounds in human rights law, advocacy, and compliance, we work closely with leading companies and investors to design and implement tailored human rights policies and strategies aligned with leading international frameworks. We work continuously with clients to help them implement their social impact and human rights strategy and stay in front of emerging risks in their operations and value chains.
Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights (UNGPs), companies are obliged to “know and show” how they address human rights impacts, to ensure transparency and accountability to stakeholders. Many firms are also subject to evolving regulatory requirements for companies to report on how they conduct human rights due diligence.
Our Human Rights practice assembles industry-leading multilingual project teams to conduct on-the-ground field research for investors and companies on their human rights impacts. Stakeholder engagement is at the heart of our approach, combining meaningful consultation with workers, communities and other affected rightsholders with commentary from local and regional experts, and in-depth public domain research.
Regulatory compliance, risk management, stakeholder engagement, and corporate responsibility increasingly mandate and expect companies to demonstrate they are meeting certain social standards, anticipating and mitigating negative social consequences and improving their social performance in line with environmental and economic considerations. We help clients establish measurement and monitoring frameworks to measure, manage, and improve social performance of their services, products, policies, and programs.
With expertise in community engagement, resource management, human rights, social compliance, and monitoring and evaluation, our diverse team works closely with clients to tailor social assessment and measurement to their needs, whether it is at a corporate level, for a specific product, service, or for all or part of their supply chain. We work in partnership with clients so that social indicators assessed are in line with their corporate strategy and can be monitored and managed during current state and in the future.
We support organisations to integrate a just transition in their decarbonisation journey. We do this by helping to prioritise stakeholders that are most affected by the transition to a low-carbon economy, create decent work opportunities, identify opportunities for public-private collaboration, and leave no one behind.
We can help integrate a just transition into our clients’ sustainability commitments, policies, and practices, bridging the various agendas that exist at the nexus of environmental sustainability and social justice and impact.
Regulations increasingly mandate supply chain due diligence, with increased scrutiny on human rights risks beyond first tier suppliers. We help clients proactively manage potential and actual adverse human rights impacts throughout their supply chain and develop approaches to engage with high-risk suppliers globally.
Our approach ensures that a business has a due diligence policy and practices based on international best practices and guiding principles (OECD, UNGPs), and implements these in their supply chains. We then enable businesses to understand how they will enact and embed the diligence.
Leading investors are increasingly going beyond analysing financially material risks in their portfolios to assess their most salient human rights risks – those that present the most severe potential impact to people.
We leverage our experience in assessing human rights risks for corporates and our regional expertise to help investors screen portfolios for their highest risk assets. We also help investors get ahead of human rights issues pre-transaction including in the supply chain, spotlighting high risk sectors and regions and providing tailored analysis on critical issues. We bring a human rights lens to environmental & social due diligence, analysing risks based on gold standard frameworks such as the IFC Performance Standards as well as the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights (UNGPs).
Mandatory human rights due diligence is no longer a European issue — it is becoming a global standard. Across the EU, UK, Germany, France, Australia and beyond, regulators are tightening expectations on how businesses identify, manage and report on human rights risks throughout their operations and supply chains. For many organisations, the question is no longer whether to act, but how to build a due diligence programme that is credible, proportionate and fit for what is coming next.
Taken together, this regulatory landscape means human rights due diligence has become a legal and operational priority, not a reporting exercise. The organisations best positioned for what is coming are those that are building real due diligence programmes now — not waiting for enforcement deadlines to force the issue.
Following the EU Omnibus I agreement reached in early 2026, the CSDDD has been confirmed within a revised framework. The directive now applies to EU companies with over 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion in net turnover, and to non-EU companies generating €1.5 billion in EU turnover – with compliance required by July 2029. While scope thresholds have been narrowed, the core obligations remain: risk identification, mitigation, grievance mechanisms, and integration into governance. Financial penalties of up to 3% of worldwide turnover apply. Businesses no longer in direct scope should note that their largest customers almost certainly are – and supply chain pressure will flow down regardless.
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive requires companies in scope to report on social and workforce impacts under ESRS S1 and S2. Meaningful reporting against these standards requires a functioning human rights due diligence framework – disclosure without due diligence is increasingly difficult to defend. The Omnibus revision has raised the CSRD threshold to 1,000 employees and €450 million in turnover, but the direction of travel is clear: social performance data is becoming a permanent part of corporate reporting.
The UK Modern Slavery Act has required large companies to publish annual statements since 2015, but its disclosure-only model – with no financial penalties and no mandated due diligence – has long been seen as insufficient. That is changing. The UK’s Responsible Business Conduct Review, announced in 2025, is examining alignment with EU standards, and in December 2025, the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner proposed a new model law combining a forced labour import ban with mandatory corporate due diligence. Businesses operating in the UK should expect a significantly strengthened regime within the current parliament. NHS procurement regulations introducing modern slavery due diligence obligations for public bodies are also coming into force in May 2026.
Germany’s Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz (LkSG) introduced mandatory due diligence obligations for large companies operating in Germany, including risk analysis, mitigation and complaints mechanisms. While the current German government has proposed replacing it with a less bureaucratic version of the CSDDD, the underlying obligations – and the expectation to act – remain live. Elsewhere, France’s Duty of Vigilance Law continues to require large companies to establish and implement a vigilance plan. Norway’s Transparency Act mandates due diligence and public reporting. South Korea and Taiwan are both advancing national mandatory due diligence legislation. The regulatory perimeter is expanding – and it is expanding quickly.
We are incredibly grateful for all the help and support from Anthesis with both Modern Slavery and Environmental policies. It has been invaluable to us.
Mark Ward – Head of Safeguarding & Quality & Data Protection Lead, Trussell Trust
[Anthesis] has been instrumental in helping to evolve our strategic sustainability thinking working with all stakeholders through the process and supporting our positive impact ambition.
The supply chain report produced by Anthesis was a key element of the success of the initial public offering (IPO) of In The Style. The report ensured investor confidence in ITS and set out a clear roadmap to guide progress.
![logo The Trussel Trust Green](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 300 94"%3E%3C/svg%3E "Human Rights & Social Impact Services")
