The responsibility to respect human rights
ABB’s recognizes that respect for human rights is a material issue and that failure to do so can cause harm to people and adversely affect our business, with potential legal, financial and reputational consequences. The company has had its Human Rights policy in place since 2007 and is trying to operationalize those principles in daily performance and in a coherent manner. Raising awareness of human rights is one of ABB's nine Sustainability Objectives for 2014-2020.
The UN Guiding Principles are central to ABB’s human rights training. A global awareness-raising program for senior managers focuses on understanding how ABB can potentially impact human rights, the importance of due diligence and how the company is embedding human rights in business processes, and A global capacity building program is also under way to create a network of specialists in key countries.
In addition, ABB supports a number of leading organizations in their efforts to improve corporate understanding of human rights issues. The company participates and learns at the same time.