This Converged HREDD Assessment Tool was developed collaboratively by AIM-Progress, the Consumer Goods Forum Human Rights Coalition, FLA and Proforest and published in December 2024.
Designed to be flexible across industries, this tool aims to support businesses in standardising HREDD practices, streamlining assessments, and containing supplier assessment fatigue through a converged, open-source approach.
It allows companies to:
- Self-assess HREDD systems in own operations and supply chains
- Engage suppliers in identifying and addressing potential risks
- Streamline due diligence processes, aligned with OECD and UNGP standards
Applied at company level, this tool will help businesses assess the maturity of a company’s HREDD systems across its own operations and supply chains, including both service and goods providers. It can be used by companies in any goods/service sector. It is a practical, ready to use resource inspired by company best practices to support business-to business engagement and continuous improvement of businesses’ HREDD maturity. We hope the tool can support companies on their journey to develop and continuously improve their HREDD approach, as they endeavour to effectively implement HREDD.
Based on user feedback, in the months since launch we have made a number of adaptations to the tool, mostly focused on the evaluation results to allow companies to see overall statistics, breakdown by the part of the business and breakdown by HREDD step. There are additional enhancements to support supplier engagement in the form of graphics showing maturity levels and percentage of the assessed requirements met.
Some principles for roll-out:
- By offering this converged HREDD assessment tool to the industry we are striving to reduce duplication and encourage mutual recognition of assessment efforts, this being a major foundational principle of AIM-Progress.
- The tool is free and open source. Its use is voluntary, and companies can deploy it as part of their responsible sourcing and HREDD strategies.
- Companies may wish to have results of supplier self-assessments verified by an external third party. The results of that verification procedure belong to the party who pays for the verification (as is the case for audits). Owners of verification results are strongly encouraged to share them with other companies to promote mutual recognition and avoid duplication of assessment and verification efforts.
- We also encourage collaboration on action planning to close out gaps and build capability. AIM-Progress will use the converged HREDD assessment tool as a foundational basis for its supplier capability building programme and can help facilitate collaboration between companies, whilst ensuring compliance with anti-trust legislation.
- We will encourage the integration of the tool into existing supplier assessment platforms that our members are using. We are currently evaluating opportunities to digitalise this tool, in collaboration with ITC – International Trade Centre.