"Investors need better ways to find companies making a difference", 10 Mar 2017

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) business challenges increasingly are on the agenda for mainstream investors...In a newly released study, we find that while social measurement initiatives abound, none sufficiently evaluate what matters most: outcomes and performance.  Instead the majority assess whether companies have social policies and governance structures in place...with little or no examination of whether these efforts have the intended effect.  This...has resulted in a costly and complex landscape of measurements that fails to deliver meaningful, comparable data about company performance on human rights.  Greater progress has been made on the governance and environmental aspects of company performance...[but] the impact of weak supply chain labor practices or other human rights concerns...are more difficult to measure and harder to solve...Companies and investors should be working to create a more sustainable global economy...The good news is efforts to date provide many of the building blocks that will be needed to accomplish these goals...the many human rights-specific ratings — such as Oxfam’s Behind the Brands or the newer Corporate Human Rights Benchmark — usefully highlight the range of social challenges companies face and which now must be measured routinely and comprehensively to truly assess social impact.