Industries

Impactt has been active in the garment industry since its foundation in 1997. We are acknowledged experts in due diligence and auditing across all key garment source countries and have a fine track record of improvement programmes tackling the root causes of human rights issues. These include harnessing improved productivity to increase wages and improve conditions, as well as developing workers’ bargaining skills and improving social relations in the workplace.

We run helplines and grievance handling systems with key garment manufacturers in Malaysia, South India and Bangladesh. We have also been pioneers in developing remedy for workers in the garment sector, including remediation of child labour and forced labour. We specialise in brokering collaboration between companies, buyers, agents and manufacturers, so as to maximise effectiveness, delivering better results for workers and for business. We work with the world’s leading brands in the garment sector as well as many leading agents and manufacturing groups around the world.

Our work within the construction sector has centred on social audit and investigation, where we interview workers and management, review business documents and inspect worksites and accommodation. Working with the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC) in Qatar, we follow a bespoke social auditing framework structured on the SC’s Worker Welfare Standards, providing compliance scores for contractors primarily in construction, but also including security and catering.

We have also been providing tailor-made training sessions to construction companies across neighbouring countries in the Gulf, which have focused on ethical recruitment. We work with companies to understand the specific sector-based and country-based challenges they face, and frame the training sessions around these key findings. This helps to ensure that our workshops can lead to targeted interventions, including new clauses in service level agreements, introduction of new 3rd party grievance mechanisms, and enhancements to due diligence in worker origin countries.

Impactt has worked within the energy and heavy industry sectors for the past five years, helping clients to understand where human rights risks sit within their asset portfolio and value chain, providing high-level strategic advice, whilst also training and building the capacity of internal teams to deal with risks as they arise.

Our work stretches across the sectors, from human rights assessments at Chinese shipyards, forced labour remediation within Southeast Asian construction projects, to responsible recruitment training in the Gulf of Mexico. The team take a hands-on and pragmatic approach with clients, helping them to deliver on their human rights commitments in a way that continues to benefit workers within their own operations and value chains.

Our work in manufacturing varies greatly due to the varying needs of our diverse client base. Impactt is often consulted to identify and address instances of human rights risks and child labour. Impactt visits factories and manufacturing sites to assess human rights risks and designs compliance policies, procedures, and training to address the risks identified. This site-by-site approach is crucial to ensure safe and ethical working conditions for workers and address child labour in manufacturing. In addition, Impactt draws on its broad networks of academic institutions to undertake sector wide analysis to learn what policies and procedures encourage productivity while still ensuring workers are provided the respect and dignity they deserve. This can be used by policy makers and manufacturers to adapt policies and procedures for more effective working conditions.

We work with investors and development finance institutions (DFIs) to understand labour and human rights risks related to business risk. We provide data and insight on labour issues, developments and trends around the globe and provide strategic support both internally and with external stakeholders businesses are required to report to. We carry out due diligence against IFC performance standards particularly where there is a high risk of severe labour issues and develop due diligence tools/frameworks where traditional approaches do not cut it. We also build portfolio businesses’ capacity to implement environmental and social action plans (ESAP) action plans and work with them to develop and implement effective environmental and social management systems (ESMS). We also advise investors and portfolio businesses on how to navigate through crisis without harming human rights.