Asses Risk and Impacts

• Understand the importance of risk and impact assessment as part of an overall due diligence approach.
• Understand supply chain mapping as a critical step in assessing risks and impacts of labor abuse.
• Risk and impact assessments are fundamental elements of the due diligence process. They help identify ways in which may be causing or contributing to labor rights abuses, as well as areas where risk could be indicated. Assessments can help identify both existing child labor,forced labor, discrimination and gender based violence in supply chains, or risks of where in the supply chain these abuses may occur.
• This allows to immediately take steps to mitigate or remediate existing problems, or to target social compliance efforts to those areas of the supply chain with the greatest risks.
• The assessment should involve identifying people or groups who may be affected by business activities and projecting any adverse impacts that could occur. Such an assessment should also factor in groups or individuals that may be acutely vulnerable to exploitation, whether through life circumstances (e.g., poverty or lack of education) or through legal and social discrimination.
• Assessing Root cause - A significant number of countries from which manufactured products are increasingly sourced or where major agricultural commodities are grown have deeply entrenched social, economic, and governance challenges that perpetuate child labor and forced labor. The most salient of these challenges is poverty. 

Engage stakeholders and partners

• By involving your stakeholders in the PO system, the opportunity to gather more ideas and have a broader range of people with whom to vet issues and solutions.
• Stakeholder involvement allows you to gather a variety of perspectives before you commit to a particular approach.
• Engaging stakeholders can help you to understand the consequences of certain decisions and actions for specific stakeholders, the varied and changing expectations from stakeholders, and the key issues that surface in your supply chains

Ex: how big a problem is child labor in a particular country or community? What services should you provide to a victim of labor - migrant/ trafficked, if one is identified in the supply chain? Who should you hire to provide training to your key suppliers on social compliance.

The following could be taken up for the assessment process:

1. Pre-Assessment questionnaire as per Standard requirement
2. Opening Meeting
3. Interacting with staff and field team
4. Community visit and Focused group interaction (including youth and children)
5. Workers Interview
6. Interaction with Government members / province protection system
7. Document Review
8. On-site Report Preparation
9.  Closing Meeting (de-briefing)
10. Sharing the visit report to the PO