“Human rights work is definitely one of the most crucial key areas for us. It is important to identify where within our value chain the most salient human rights risks occur, so that we can focus our development actions on the right areas”, said Jenni Strengell, St1’s Head of Sustainability.
During 2020, St1 developed its sustainability framework even further and identified development topics for the upcoming years. Human rights came up as one of the priority areas for further work.
St1’s approach to human rights is based on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the International Bill of Human Rights, and the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. Apart from publicly committing to respecting human rights, businesses should become aware of the impacts and risks in the company value chain.
“Businesses are expected to proactively manage their human rights – actual and potential. This means they must not only have effective commitments and policies in place, but also have processes, procedures and tools to effectively and systematically identify, mitigate, manage and control the risks and impacts to people”, said Reetta Loponen, Head of Enact in Finland.
Why use Enact?
Enact has helped St1 identify some of the most significant human rights issues to concentrate on throughout our value chain and is continuing to support our organization in building processes to mitigate and manage the impacts related to our operations. Awareness and commitment must cascade down to each business and each relevant process where impacts can be managed. “It is a learning process at the same time. We are helping to create awareness and capacity within the organization”, continued Loponen.
She added, “St1’s commitment to sustainability is reflected in their appetite to develop their ways of operating in order to also become leaders in social sustainability topics.”
“We want to walk the talk, and we know that we are not able to do it by ourselves alone. We need to involve our partners and engage other organizations, as well as our stakeholders to collaborate”, said Strengell.
Learn more about our sustainability work here.