How to Address Modern Slavery in your Organisation
28th October 2024
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Global estimates of modern slavery suggest on any given day, around 50 million people – or nearly one in every 150 people in the world, are in some form of forced labor or forced marriage. In Australia, the 2023 Global Slavery Index estimates that there are over 40,000 people living in modern slavery. These figures demonstrate how far we have to go to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target of ending modern slavery universally by 2030. But how to address modern slavery in your business? Here we discuss what is modern slavery, why we need to address it and four steps you can take now.
What is modern slavery and why do we need to address it?
Modern slavery refers to situations where individuals are exploited and unable to refuse or leave due to threats, violence, coercion, deception, or abuse of power, including forced labor, human trafficking, and debt bondage. It is a global issue, no region is untouched by modern slavery practices. Forced labour is a concern regardless of a country’s wealth and it touches virtually all parts of the private economy.
As a global community we must engage and confront the reality that modern slavery is unacceptable and come together to address this issue. While governments need to lead the charge, other sections of society need to also take accountability in shifting this trajectory. Modern slavery practices must be brought out of the darkness and into the light so they can be acknowledged, addressed, and eradicated.
Australian businesses, both those who report to the Modern Slavery Act and those who don’t, need to make it business-as-usual to scrutinise their supply chains no matter how simple or complex. As one of the world’s largest economies, Australia is exposed to the risk of modern slavery internally, but also through the products it imports. Businesses need to recognise and address their risks and their Boards should be held accountable to ensure this is done.
A reports by Walk Free published in 2022,found that Australian businesses are not fully complying with the requirements of the Modern Slavery Act, including in the garment industry where 31% of companies assessed do not meet minimum reporting requirements under the Modern Slavery Act legislation. This highlights the need to strengthen the legislation and enforce compliance.
How to address modern slavery in your business – Four steps to take now
1. Create internal buy-in
Building strong and effective systems to mitigate the risks of modern slavery takes time and resources. Progress will be hard if internal support, especially from Executives and Management Teams is lacking. Ensuring that key decision-makers in an organisation, and those in functions that enable (or block) response action, are on board is absolutely vital. In our experience, this step often requires information sessions and candid debate about the reality of the true exposure of an organisation to modern slavery. It can be helpful for those sessions to be supported by a credible outside voice, rather than internally-led, where perceived bias to proceed one way or another, could obscure the message.
2. Understand where and how risks arise
Creating a picture of the areas in which your organisation may face exposure to modern slavery will enable action where it is most meaningful and help direct scarce resources to address modern slavery in your business. For smaller organisations, building this picture might entail simply mapping out suppliers and risk areas. For larger organisations with complex and long supply chains, a more formal and systematised risk assessment will be appropriate. Guidance on how we approach risk assessment.
3. Take targeted action
Once your organisation understands where risks of modern slavery arise, action can be taken. Again, with resource constraints in mind, our approach is to support clients in identifying areas where risk might be most severe and to start there. Actions could include engaging with suppliers to understand if risks identified are real. They could also entail assurance actions such as site visits, audits and the like.
Mandatory modern slavery due diligence was a key recommendation emerging from the government’s review of the Modern Slavery Act. Ensuring entities implement a due diligence system to assess and address identified risks, to then annually report on activities undertaken, including regular improvements, are increasingly becoming mandated legally and expected from stakeholders.
4. Build a longer-term vision, strategy and systems
Alongside these targeted actions, we also recommend organisations build a vision of their human rights performance. Much like a business adopts a vision statement and supporting strategy, it is helpful to conceptualise how the protection of human rights feeds into that vision and strategy. For larger entities, this may include revisiting risk appetite statements and categories; for SMEs it may simply be an internal guiding statement. Key is that this statement is meaningful, to guide the development of a longer-term strategy.
This vision, should then create the internal drive and commitment to develop the kinds of systems that will enable systematic response, rather than only ad hoc targeted actions. Some of the system’s organisations should think about creating or overhauling include: procurement systems; contract management systems; grievance and remediation systems, amongst many others.
For further guidance on how to comply with the Modern Slavery Act read ‘What is the Modern Slavery Act Australia and How to Comply.’
Want to learn more about how to address Modern Slavery in your business?
We have a team of human rights leaders passionate about supporting organisations on their counter-modern slavery journeys. If you would like to learn more about our human rights services, get support with any of the above steps, or understand how we can help you address modern slavery or wider ESG topics in your business reach out to our experts Brian Kraft and Mishwaza Monsur.
We’ve been technical experts and trusted advisors to some of Australia’s most well-known companies for over a decade, contact us to learn more or call +61 3 7035 1740.
Original article published 2023. Latest update published October 2024.