Download our Human Rights Due Diligence Tool on Ethical Recruitment here: https://bit.ly/3d8zDCY
To help businesses understand and identify recruitment risks in their operations, Earthworm Foundation has launched a Malaysia-focused due diligence tool on ethical recruitment.
This tool helps fulfil corporate responsibilities towards respecting workers' rights, particularly on ethical recruitment practices. It is designed for staff who recruit migrant workers; or those involved in hiring contractors, human resources, and sustainability or responsible sourcing units.
By conducting human rights due diligence – taking steps to avoid human rights violations – in recruitment practices, businesses can:
- increase transparency of recruitment practices, processes and costs;
- assess risks in their recruitment practices and take actions to prevent negative impacts to the company, its business partners, suppliers and workers;
- gather information to remedy negative impacts, and report to buyers and other interested actors.
Back in June 2019, we held a multi-stakeholder forum on ethical recruitment in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – the first forum of its kind aimed at the palm oil industry. The forum highlighted the importance of human rights due diligence as an ongoing process to manage risks in palm oil operations; one that is integral to continually improving responsible business practices.
With that in mind, we developed this tool, as well as a study on recruitment costs. The snapshot study looks at recruitment costs and processes for small and medium-sized palm oil companies and their migrant workers. As actual costs borne by employers and migrant workers can be opaque, the recruitment process is vulnerable to unethical practices.
