With the current wave of emerging human rights due diligence (HRDD) legislation across the globe, we are moving into a new era of mandatory HRDD. This brings the promise of potentially widespread and lasting change to working conditions in global supply chains. However, it also brings the risk of ineffective implementation, with fragmented approaches leading to increased bureaucracy and a burden on those at the sharp end of the supply chain.
How can this risk be mitigated? Collaborative systems and frameworks that reduce duplicated efforts and enhance transparency play a key role. This is where the Social & Labor Convergence Program (SLCP) and the Open Supply Hub share an aligned vision. Both organizations share the belief that solutions that drive industry-wide collaboration and prioritize the needs of suppliers are essential to enhancing the intended positive impact of mandatory HRDD. Our collaboration during recent years has been grounded in our shared vision and the complementarity of our services.
SLCP provides the Converged Assessment Framework (CAF) – a tool that results in a facility-owned, comprehensive set of social and labor data that can be widely shared and thus reduce the need for repetitive audits. Use of SLCP’s CAF has scaled rapidly, with over 15,000 facilities now registered. The benefits of Open Supply Hub’s OS IDs in this context are clear: as more and more SLCP participants adopt OS IDs, the interoperability of SLCP’s dataset and the ability to combine it with other rich tools and services becomes increasingly more streamlined.
What does this look like in practice for a facility and their stakeholders?
Let’s consider this from the perspective of a cut & sew apparel facility in Turkiye, supplying a number of international brands. They want to proactively engage in human rights due diligence and best practices at their facility but are completely overloaded with audit and information requests, which constantly puts them in a reactive rather than proactive position. The companies sourcing from them don’t want to put this burden on them, but also really need the information they are asking for to complete their work.
One of their main buyers tells them they are starting to accept SLCP assessments and suggests they look into it. They learn that over 90 brands already accept SLCP and that, with SLCP, the facility owns the assessment data and decides how it is shared. They, therefore, opt to do an SLCP assessment and register on the SLCP Gateway.
As part of this process, they are prompted to enter an OS ID and go to Open Supply Hub to register their facility and create a free, open profile with all of the basic information about their location and operations. They then add that ID to their facility profile in SLCP and complete the SLCP assessment and verification process.
They inform all of their customers of their OS ID and that they have an SLCP assessment available.
This now means:
• Anytime a stakeholder needs basic information about that supplier, they can find it on OS Hub, using the OS ID.
• It becomes much easier for brands to identify their suppliers when searching by OS ID in SLCP’s public facility list, and then request access to their assessment details directly. They no longer have to manually figure out if the supplier name they use matches the name in the SLCP database.
• If brands want to layer or align their suppliers’ data in SLCP with other datasets that integrate OS IDs, like those in ZDHC, Worldly, Fair Wear Foundation, and more, they can use the same OS ID across all of those systems.
As this example illustrates, publicly available tools – such as the CAF and OS IDs – that drive efficiency and improve access to credible and actionable data can play a key role in supporting facilities and their business partners. This is not just to comply with HRDD legislation on paper, but to implement effective HRDD in practice.
Having collaborated informally for several years, SLCP is pleased to now welcome OS Hub as a Signatory to our Program. As a multi-stakeholder initiative, our diverse base of signatories is key to further improving the CAF and pursuing further convergence of social assessments. Having OS Hub as a Signatory ensures we continue to build our approaches in concert and alignment toward our shared vision around collaboration and harmonization of efforts. We look forward to continuing to share updates on this work together and with our shared communities.
Helpful resources:
• Learn more about the OS ID and how to use it:
• Read more case studies about organizations incorporating OS IDs
• Want to connect with the OS Hub team to learn more about how you can make the most of OS Hub and our free, open, interoperable ID scheme? Email info@opensupplyhub.org.
