"Multistakeholder collaboration by business, for business", June 2019

By working together...companies can build effective solutions to human rights challenges, raise standards and improve communication and stakeholder relationships...when successful, collaborative action can often achieve stronger outcomes for affected people...For the collaboration to be effective, participants need a shared purpose and objective..

The benefits of diverse stakeholders to work together to solve business and human rights-related problems is widely recognised... opportunities to strengthen efforts to work collaboratively [include]:

1. Boosting cross-stakeholder familiarity and trust...
2. Protecting the safe space for companies to share openly: Regulatory tools are increasingly being used to encourage companies to manage their human rights issues... they can also have a chilling effect on companies’ willingness to share experiences with others, particularly about approaches that haven’t worked...It’s important that we find ways to maintain a safe space for companies to share experience...
3. Improving access to lessons learned from multistakeholder collaborations: Improved access... would help strengthen new efforts to collaborate by enabling companies and other stakeholders to build on what’s already been learned.