Learn

Build knowledge and internal champions

Watch your company’s leadership and impact evolve by growing internal expertise and taking actions to improve.

unfold_more

ACTION

01

Learn about human rights abuses in seafood

Learn

Explore

UN

International Labour Organization (ILO)

Conservation International

ACTION

02

Identify high-level opportunities for improvement within your company

Identify Opportunities

  • Identify areas in which your company’s values, goals, and customer expectations align with opportunities to improve human rights policies and procedures.
    • Assess your company’s policies and practices against human rights guidance, law, and regulation, including the UN Guiding Principles and national human trafficking and forced labor laws.
    • Compare current seafood policies, practices, and expectations against national human rights, corporate responsibility, and disclosure laws.
    • Review implications of trading goods associated with forced labor. 

ACTION

03

Build internal support for advancing social responsibility

Educate, Engage and Identify

  • Educate and engage corporate leadership on the risks associated with human rights abuses, particularly forced labor, in seafood supply chains. Discuss specific opportunities to strengthen social responsibility practices and the business benefits of doing so.
  • Engage other internal decision-makers (e.g., seafood sourcing departments or directors) to identify the resources and expertise needed to improve social responsibility practices across the business.
    • Over time, build social responsibility improvements into employee performance metrics (e.g., benefits for buyers who incorporate social responsibility into seafood purchasing decisions).
  • Identify champions and empower them to establish initiatives that improve social responsibility practices throughout the company.

World Business Council for Sustainable Development

ACTION

04

Train employees on social responsibility expectations

Train

  • Train employees within your company and, where possible, provide training for or share training materials with other companies and decision-makers within your supply chain. These might include:
    • Management staff (e.g., supervisors in processing facilities, captains on vessels).
    • Distribution workers such as truck drivers.
    • Procurement teams.
    • Subcontracting companies.
    • Recruitment agencies.
    • Workers who harvest, farm, or process seafood.
    • Other stakeholders within your company’s manageable interest.
  • Training topics may include:
    • Applicable legal and regulatory requirements.
    • Expectations of downstream customers.
    • Salient human rights issues.
    • Data collection to support risk assessments.
    • Workplace rights, including freedom of association and collective bargaining.
    • Grievance mechanisms.
    • Recruitment practices.
    • Remediation policies.
  • Share guidance with suppliers on human rights topics, such as:
    • Best practice for recognizing and remedying human and labor rights issues, and for protecting workers who share grievances from retaliation.
    • Company expectations related to human and labor rights, including working conditions, living conditions, and payment systems for seafood workers.

Optimize Your Company's Path

Discover how companies can apply the RISE Roadmap to improve their social responsibility practices.

Retailers/Brands

Suppliers

  • Use RISE to learn how to take a human rights due diligence approach to improving supply chains.
  • Participate in pre-competitive efforts and multi-stakeholder initiatives that support industry-wide adoption of aligned goals and practices, reducing the likelihood of divergent human rights objectives.
  • Consider hiring third-party experts to conduct training or identify due diligence improvements.
  • Join a growing community to support industry-wide adoption of improved social responsibility practices.

Processors

  • Use RISE to learn how to take a human rights due diligence approach to improving supply chains.
  • Participate in pre-competitive efforts and multi-stakeholder initiatives that support industry-wide adoption of aligned goals and practices, reducing the likelihood of divergent human rights objectives.
  • Consider hiring third-party experts to conduct training or identify due diligence improvements.
  • Join a growing community to support industry-wide adoption of improved social responsibility practices.
  • Inform vessel, processing facility, and other seafood workers about their human and labor rights in the workplace and the company policies and practices related to these rights.
  • Assign one or more staff members to learn about, inform improvements to, and lead social responsibility efforts to positively impact workers across company operations.

Producers

  • Inform vessel, processing facility, and other seafood workers about their human and labor rights in the workplace and the company policies and practices related to these rights.
  • Assign one or more staff members to learn about, inform improvements to, and lead social responsibility efforts to positively impact workers across company operations.

Build the Foundation

Responsible Recruitment

Worker Engagement

  • Train staff and supply chain partners on core labor rights—including the right to collective bargaining and freedom of association—and the importance of access to effective grievance mechanisms.
  • Ensure that workers have access to information on their rights and conditions of employment from recruitment to employment.
  • Empower workers with training and resources to enable meaningful participation in monitoring labor conditions and engaging in improvement processes once on the job.

Decent Work at Sea

Resource Download

Enter a few details about yourself to view this resource.

  • This information will not be shared, and is only used to communicate with and better understand our users.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Dismiss

Newsletter Sign-up

Enter a few details about yourself to view this resource.

  • This information will not be shared, and is only used to communicate with and better understand our users.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Dismiss