Competency Rulers on Social Performance in Human Rights Management

Abstract

Abstract Company must aspire for its business presence to positively and have strong management of Social Performance where impacts arising from areas of its operation are managed whilst contributing to the society in a responsible manner. The paper aims to demonstrate the need of competency in a Social Performance skill-group in supporting companies in its Human Rights management. Generally, human rights issues that can arise include nuisance to communities, violation of communities’ rights, land acquisition, displacement, environmental degradation to that of forced and child labour. The more recent discourse on human rights is relevant to Climate Change and Just Transition. Therefore, it is important for companies to operate in a manner that adopt human rights management ensuring they respect the rights of affected stakeholders. Fundamentally, personnel appointed to implement these deliverables must have the apt knowledge and skills. In ensuring these knowledge and skills are relevant, a set of competency rulers can be established to ensure the nature of the tasks and deliverables are acquired as a practitioner in human rights management. Overall, the competency rulers must be relevant to indicators and requirements of the work that is relevant to guidance ranging from from United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGP), International Finance Corporation (IFC), International Labour Organisation (ILO) among others. In addition, familiarity with company's internal standards and guidelines are among the necessities for the personnel to execute their responsibilities. As the industry continues to face challenges in complying to legislations, meeting stakeholders’ requirements, expectations and standards pertaining to Social Performance; companies are also expected to demonstrate responsible operations in managing Human Rights. Hence, companies can strive to equip its employees with the right competency. In this case, the competency ruler on Social Performance is exemplary in addressing this.