1. Commit

Commit to eliminating child labor and protecting young workers in line with international labor conventions. Ensure these protections are publicly accessible on websites, reports, code of conduct, and sustainability statements. Committing to the protection of children, including adolescents, is a key step in building trust and appealing to a growing group of socially conscious consumers.

2. Embed

Develop policies that allow legal employment of adolescents rather than excluding them. Include conditions for legally employing adolescents in your child labor policy in line with or beyond the minimum requirements set in the national labour laws regarding employment of adolescent workers. Protect adolescents by restricting hazardous work, setting limited working hours, and enabling education access. Include adolescent employment terms in your Code of Conduct for suppliers, including aligning adolescent hiring norms to align with the national legal framework and international conventions.

To ensure no children are employed, establish procedures for age verification, safe job assignments, and recordkeeping. To be certain that young workers are protected, mandate transparent recordkeeping of workers under 18 and conduct risk assessments in factories to determine as well as assess young workers’ exposure to hazardous work.

Share your policies and procedures with all suppliers and sub-suppliers to ensure clarity and alignment and confirm that all suppliers have their own policies and procedures that reflect the company norms. Obtain a written commitment from suppliers and sub-suppliers throughout your supply chain to follow the company Code of Conduct (CoC) and policies.  Visit/audit all actors along the supply chain regularly, beyond Tier 1 suppliers, to verify ethical practices and working conditions.

A comprehensive training program is necessary to reinforce understanding and effective implementation of written policies and procedures. Training suppliers directly or through a third-party trainer to create and convey required information. At minimum, training should target relevant staff, including management, worker representatives and human resources staff. All new staff in these positions should be trained upon hiring and undergo regular refresher trainings on key topics related to safe employment of adolescents and the prevention of child labor.

A grievance mechanism is a process that enables you to hear the voices of people who are affected by your business and carry out a fair follow-up. It is important that workers can raise issues safely without repercussion, knowing that their voice will be heard and action will be taken to resolve it. An effective grievance mechanism can help your business identify and address issues before they grow. Therefore, it is in your best interest to ensure that all of your business partners have comprehensive grievance policies and effective processes. A grievance procedure is effective if all workers, regardless of their roles or seniority, know about it, trust it and are able to use it.

There are many means by which workers can submit complaints. These include suggestion boxes, helplines, and factory grievance committees or local complaint committees. A grievance mechanism does not need to be complex, but it must be tailored to the situation in which it is required. It is important to always consider workers’ needs and feedback in these considerations. Most effective grievance mechanisms can handle the majority of grievances internally; however, in some cases, grievances may constitute a legal violation and must be escalated to the proper authority.

An effective management system is the key to ensuring that companies know their supply chain partners, where there are risks and what is needed to resolve them. The specific actions that a company takes to prevent child labor and protect young workers in their supply chains include a variety of elements, including understanding definitions and responsibilities in accordance with national and international labor laws, conducting risk assessments with appropriate systems in place, and maintaining grievance mechanisms for a responsive and safe reporting, among many others.

3. Remediate

Access to remedy is a fundamental principle of the international human rights system. All companies have a responsibility to ensure that the factories and businesses they work with provide needed remedy for human rights abuses that they have caused, whether directly or indirectly. Providing remedy to young workers whose employment does not meet the legal conditions also presents unique challenges. They are above mandatory-school age; hence enrollment in mainstream education, which is commonly offered to child workers under the age of 14, is often not an option. Some may opt to learn a new skill through vocational education, but the cost can be prohibitive and may only be offered during hours they are needed to help at home. Legal employment, in safe, non-hazardous work with limited working hours, requires knowledgeable employers who are willing to employ young workers under restrictive conditions. Gender-specific risks such as sexual harassment, pregnancy and reproductive health, pressure to work in lower-paid roles, or domestic and care responsibilities, require special attention. Gender-responsive remediation paths must include interviews by trained personnel, referral to specialized organizations including health and psychological support, scheduling remediation activities around domestic duties, or strict safeguards and reporting mechanisms in case of return to the workplace.

Companies can overcome the above challenges through thoughtful remediation. If a child labor case or a young worker working in hazardous conditions is identified in your workplace, the following checklist will guide the actions taken, with support and engagement of international purchasing companies, suppliers and experts: