Beyond the Policy: Building a Human Rights Function

What does it take to build a human rights function from the ground up, especially when you’re the first person in the role? And how much of the foundation, from supplier relationships to data, policies, and workflows, has your sustainability team already built?

Companies are increasingly expected to manage human rights as an operational discipline, an expectation the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) is writing into law for the largest companies and into everyone else’s supplier contracts, yet in most organizations the work still lives in policy language. Much of what a real function needs, though, sustainability teams already run: supplier engagement programs and audit relationships, codes of conduct, value-chain data and traceability tools, governance channels, and hard-won internal credibility. The builds that work extend that infrastructure rather than starting beside it, especially in the supply chain, where the two agendas share the same suppliers, data, and leverage. Join practitioners from the first person in the role to leaders of mature global functions as they get specific about what to borrow, what to build new, and how to keep human rights a full partner, not a footnote, on the foundation sustainability built.