Nestlé in society Creating Shared Value and meeting our commitments 2015

Nestlé in society:
Creating Shared Value
Nutrition, health
and wellness
Rural development
Water
Environmental
sustainability
Human rights
and compliance
Our
people
G4-2, Indigenous rights G4-DMA, Assessment G4-DMA, G4-HR11
Human rights
We keep our responsibility to respect human rights at the forefront of our business by continually reviewing and
assessing the human rights risks of our business activities. We strive to prevent and address any negative impacts
that we may have on the rights of those whom we employ, do business with or interact with along our value
chain. Through carefully determining a balance between compliance and continuous improvement on the one
hand, and transparency and confidentiality on the other, we adapt our approach to the local circumstances where
we operate.
Human rights reporting: for an
integrated approach
Thanks to our five years’ experience of rolling out our Human
Rights Due Diligence Programme (HRDDP) across our
business activities in various countries, we now have a better
understanding of what our human rights priorities are. We are
determined to manage these salient human rights issues –
those human rights at risk of the most severe negative impacts
through the company’s activities and business relationships.
We achieve this through our HRDDP and a dedicated action
plan for each issue identified as salient. Some of them are
rooted in economic, social and cultural realities that take time
to change, especially when they are located far up our supply
chain. In such cases, we are committed to using the leverage
that we have through the industry, our suppliers and other
stakeholders to address these issues and align them with
international human rights standards.
This year, for the first time, together with Shift we are using
the UNGP Reporting Framework to report on the progress we
have made – and the challenges that we face – in this area.
The last few years have seen the emergence of a multitude
of new projects and initiatives in the area of business and
human rights, many of them focusing on transparency and
reporting. The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act
(2010), the EU non-financial reporting and diversity information
directive (2014) and the UK Modern Slavery Act (2015) are just
a few examples that illustrate how this trend has materialised
at national and regional levels.
To meet growing expectations for more transparency and
clarity from regulators, investors, civil society organisations
and others, we have opted for an integrated approach to
human rights reporting that is based – for the first time – on
the UNGP Reporting Framework.
Instead of releasing a stand-alone report on human rights,
we have opted to include reporting against the UNGP
Reporting Framework as part of our annual CSV report. The
Corporate Human Rights Benchmark initiative that is being
developed by the Institute for Human Rights and Business, the
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre and a group of
investors, has also helped us frame the way in which we will
be reporting our human rights in the future.
This chapter, therefore, describes our overall approach to
human rights, including the governance structure in place
(UNGP Reporting Framework Part A) and the focus of
reporting (UNGP Reporting Framework Part B), while details
about how we manage specific salient human rights issues are
provided in the relevant sections of this report (UNGP
Reporting Framework Part C).
This integrated approach fits perfectly with the way we
have approached human rights at Nestlé since 2010.
Integrating human rights into our existing policies, procedures
and management systems has always been our objective. We
firmly believe that this is the only way to embed human rights
considerations into our daily business activities across the
company wherever we operate. Our entire HRDDP has been
structured with this principle in mind and will continue to
serve this purpose in the future.
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