Worker Voices, Because Excel Sheets Don’t Talk Back: Sustainable Investing and Human Rights Due Diligence

When I first learned about the project and specifically the tool for human rights due diligence (HRDD) we would be working with, I was struck by the alignment between its mission and my own personal and professional journey. Entering this project, I carry with me not only an academic and professional background in human rights, but also deeply personal experiences that shape how I see the importance of worker protections, corporate accountability, and sustainability initiatives. This project represents a convergence of my intellectual interests, my practical experiences, and my values.

I come from a working-class family where I witnessed firsthand the risks and vulnerabilities that workers face in unsafe and unprotected environments. My father worked in jobs that were often physically dangerous, with virtually no worker protections, limited rights, and little regard for long-term health and safety. For much of my life, this personal reality felt separate from global conversations about corporate responsibility and international frameworks like the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). But through my education and professional experiences, particularly my work on international human rights issues during my undergraduate studies and my time working at the United Nations, I have come to understand how deeply connected these issues are. The story of worker exploitation, neglect, and abuse is not a local problem: it is a global one, and it often emerges in the gaps between written commitments and real-world practice.

That is precisely the space our project is tackling. We have been asked to examine global and domestic pressures that drive HRDD adoption among North American corporates, and ultimately to create a roadmap for how companies can better align their practices with growing legal, investor, and buyer demands. As the project scope highlights, there is a profound 'policy-to-practice' gap: while 75% of large global companies claim to have human rights policies aligned with the UNGPs, as many as 80% of them fail to operationalize these commitments into mature HRDD systems. These failures often manifest in exactly the kinds of worker exploitation and unsafe labor conditions that I have personally observed, and that my academic and professional work has sought to address.

What excites me most about this project is the chance to stand at the crossroads of two powerful currents. On one side, there is the slow but meaningful progress driven by international frameworks, NGOs, and human rights advocates who push corporations to uphold their responsibility to workers and communities, ensuring a life of dignity. On the other, there is a rising surge of regulatory, investor, and market pressures that demand companies turn lofty commitments into concrete practices. Having spent much of my human rights work on the 'outside' of corporate power structures, I now have the opportunity to engage with the 'inside' levers of change, the forces that can move corporations from words to action.

Rather than framing HRDD as a burden or a compliance checklist, the approach we are studying emphasizes transparency, simplicity, and innovation through technology. After our first client meeting, I had the opportunity to hear more about how this technology actually works in practice and how it ensures that workers’ voices are heard. That conversation reassured me about the seriousness and practicality of the approach. The tool we are analyzing, an AI-powered worker voice platform, goes beyond merely tracking compliance metrics; it offers companies a way to directly engage with workers and integrate their voices into corporate decision-making. For me, this focus on worker voice is especially significant. Too often, the people most affected by corporate policies are the least likely to be heard, whether due to geographic distance, power imbalances, or systemic neglect. By amplifying worker voices, such tools offer a way to close the gap between written human rights commitments and lived workplace realities.

Still, as I begin this project, I also carry concerns and questions. One concern lies in the complexity of corporate incentives. While regulations, investor activism, and buyer requirements are important drivers of change, they are not always sufficient to guarantee meaningful transformation. I have seen, in both my UN work and my studies, how companies can comply with the letter of the law while failing to embrace its spirit. There is always the risk of 'box-ticking' compliance approaches that generate reports and metrics without genuinely improving conditions for workers. As we map the pressures driving HRDD adoption and analyze gaps in corporate practice, I hope we remain attentive to this risk and look for ways to highlight the difference between superficial compliance and substantive change.

Another challenge I anticipate is the issue of data transparency. Companies often disclose high-level human rights policies but provide very little visibility into their actual HRDD practices. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to measure progress and accountability. For us, it will be a challenge to gather reliable data across diverse sectors, especially when companies may prefer to highlight their successes rather than their shortcomings. But it also represents an opportunity: by identifying where the gaps in transparency lie, we may be able to underscore the unique value of tools that enable greater accountability and real-time insights.

My personal reflections at this stage are a mixture of excitement and humility. On one hand, I am eager to contribute to a project that directly engages with themes I care deeply about: worker protections, human rights, and corporate accountability. On the other, I am aware that this space is complex, rapidly evolving, and filled with competing interests. For example, the regulatory landscape around HRDD in the U.S. and Canada is still in flux, shaped in part by European precedents. Investors, buyers, and NGOs often have different priorities, and companies themselves vary widely in their capacity and willingness to adapt. Navigating these complexities will require not only careful research but also a critical awareness of how structural power dynamics shape the outcomes.

Looking to the future of this project, I hope that our work can serve as more than just an academic exercise. My background in international human rights has taught me that research and policy frameworks matter, but they only matter insofar as they contribute to meaningful improvements in people’s lives. For me, the ultimate question is not only whether North American corporates adopt HRDD practices, but whether those practices lead to safer, fairer, and more dignified work for the millions of workers whose voices have historically been excluded. If worker voice technologies can help bridge that gap by making workers central to corporate accountability, then supporting their adoption is not just a matter of compliance, it is a matter of justice.

In closing, I see this project as an opportunity to connect my personal history, my academic training, and my professional experiences with a real-world challenge that has both global and local implications. As someone who grew up watching my father work under unsafe conditions, and who later engaged with human rights issues on the global stage, I feel a deep responsibility to approach this project with integrity and thoughtfulness. Entering the sustainable investing and HRDD space through the lens of this project is both humbling and energizing. I look forward to exploring how global and domestic pressures can be harnessed to drive meaningful corporate change.