Human rights due diligence is the process of identifying, preventing, mitigating and addressing actual and potential human rights impacts linked to a company’s operations and supply chain. For fashion, beauty and luxury companies, this can include risks such as forced labour, child labour, poor working conditions, discrimination and restrictions on freedom of association.

Effective due diligence goes beyond having a supplier code or conducting social audits. Companies need to understand where significant risks occur, assess whether existing processes are working, engage with affected stakeholders and take action where problems are identified. Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, this means looking beyond Tier 1, to understand risks across multi-tier supply chains and demonstrating how findings inform decisions, are followed-up and, where appropriate, lead to remediation. The CSDDD places many of these expectations on a legal footing for companies in scope. GoodCorporation supports this work through gap analysis, risk mapping, impact assessments, remediation support and capacity building.

A living wage is not the same as a legal minimum wage. Addressing living wage risks requires companies to understand the gap between wages being paid and credible living wage levels and to consider the factors that influence workers’ earnings. This can include examining wage data, working hours, purchasing practices and the way suppliers set and manage pay.

For fashion brands, the question is not only what workers are paid at site level, but whether pricing, lead times and planning decisions make improved wages achievable in practice. Living wage work is therefore closely connected to responsible purchasing practices, supplier engagement and how risk is prioritised. It also means that brands need to look past audit findings alone and consider the commercial conditions that shape labour outcomes.

GoodCorporation can support this through worker welfare assessments, supplier engagement, training and responsible sourcing programme support where those are the right tools for the issue in hand.

Companies can assess the effectiveness of their human rights due diligence by examining whether their policies, processes and controls are identifying significant risks and leading to appropriate action. This requires evidence of what is happening in practice, rather than relying solely on policies, procedures or reported activities.

Evidence can include worker interviews, stakeholder engagement, grievance data, risk assessments, supplier information, audit findings and records of actions taken to address identified problems. An independent assessment can provide a further view of whether the company’s approach is working as intended and where it could be strengthened.

Greenwashing risk arises when claims about ingredients, sourcing, packaging or environmental performance move ahead of the evidence and governance that exist to support them. Beauty and luxury companies can manage greenwashing risk by ensuring that environmental claims are supported by appropriate evidence and that there are clear processes for developing, reviewing and approving claims.

This applies to claims made on packaging, websites, advertising and other consumer-facing communications. Companies should be able to demonstrate the basis for significant environmental claims and understand the limitations of the evidence supporting them. Governance should also cover who is responsible for approving claims, what evidence is required and how claims are reviewed when products, ingredients or regulations change.

The UK and EU direction of travel is toward tighter controls on misleading environmental marketing, even though the original EU Green Claims Directive proposal was withdrawn. GoodCorporation can support companies through its wider integrity, compliance and governance work where green claims risk cuts across brand, legal and operational teams.

Luxury companies can manage counterfeit and grey-market risks through a combination of supply chain controls, authorised distribution arrangements, product identification, monitoring and effective investigation of concerns. The appropriate controls will depend on the company’s products, distribution model and risk exposure.

In practice, that means looking not only at fake goods, but also at grey market diversion, third-party retailer risk and whether chain-of-custody evidence can be produced quickly when concerns arise. Companies may need to examine how products move through the supply chain, which third parties have access to them and where controls could be bypassed. Where concerns arise, clear investigation and escalation processes can help establish what has happened, identify control weaknesses and determine what action is required.

GoodCorporation’s broader services can support this work, including investigations, fraud-related work, corruption, supplier governance and code of conduct development.

The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) requires companies within its scope to identify, prevent, mitigate and address certain adverse human rights and environmental impacts in their own operations and chains of activities. Its requirements make the quality of a company’s due diligence processes increasingly important.

In practical terms, that means prioritising impacts by severity, taking preventive or corrective action, using complaints and notification mechanisms, supporting remedy where needed, tracking whether measures are effective and communicating on the approach taken. For fashion, beauty and luxury companies, the relevance lies in the complexity of sourcing models and the fact that the most serious impacts often sit beyond direct suppliers. GoodCorporation supports this through CSDDD gap analysis, due diligence design, risk mapping, assessments, supplier engagement and implementation support.

A worker welfare assessment examines working conditions and workers’ experiences on the ground to identify actual or potential concerns and areas for improvement. It can provide information that may not be apparent from supplier records, audits or management interviews alone.

Depending on the circumstances, an assessment can include confidential worker interviews, focus groups, site observations and discussions with local organisations or other stakeholders. The findings can then be used to identify practical actions relating to working conditions, worker voice, grievance mechanisms, wages or other concerns.

Worker welfare assessments are one of the services GoodCorporation offers and they can be applied in fashion supply chains where a site-based assessment of labour rights and working conditions is the right response to the issue being examined. They sit within a wider service offering that also includes human rights strategy, gap analysis, risk mapping, human rights impact assessments, remediation support, supplier engagement, training, code of conduct development and investigations. The right service mix depends on the risk, the business context and what the client needs to achieve.