Human Rights Impact Assessment

Moreover, the human rights risk assessment result is used to consider and conduct human rights impact assessment to study the impact level of residual risks regarding human rights by surveying and interviewing the Right Holders who may be affected by the human rights risk in order to gather information.

These include the company’s employees, business partners, customers and local communities. The human rights impact assessment results enable GC to understand human rights risks caused by its business activities. Therefore, the company is able to set preventive and mitigation measures, and remedy those affected more efficiently.

Human rights impacts and mitigation measures

Employee

Impacts

  • Forms of discrimination regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, age, religion, class and caste
  • Health & safety
  • Working condition
  • Freedom of association, assembly and collective bargaining
  • Data security due to employee personal data breach

Mitigation Measures

  • Related policies (e.g. Human Rights Policy, Sexual Harassment Policy, Code of Conduct, Supplier Code of Conduct, Personal Data Privacy Policy)
  • Promote occupational Health and Safety through QSE Direction and Plan, GC Management System (GCMS) and other standards (e.g. PSM, OEMS, BCMS, IMS, ISO 45001)
  • Covid-19 measures related to Work From Home and Online Learning Management System
  • Welfare committee
  • Conduct employee satisfaction and engagement survey
Community

Impacts

  • Standard of living
  • Health & safety

Mitigation Measures

  • Related policies (e.g. Human Rights Policy, sustainable water management and policy) and other related standards (e.g. ISO 39001)
  • Environmental Management System (EMS)
  • Conduct Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
  • Community satisfaction survey and community visit
  • Enhance community engagement program with community leaders
Suppliers

Impacts

  • Illegal forms of labor
  • Discrimination

Mitigation Measures

  • Supplier code of conduct and supplier acknowledgement form
  • Supply Chain management system
  • Supplier self-assessment
  • Supplier Survey
  • Sustainability performance assessment for suppliers
  • Communicate with suppliers in the operational level about expected performance that meet the company’s standard, for example, compliance good governance guidelines, ILO convention on labor rights, etc.
Security

Impacts

  • Potential use of excessive force by security management to provide protection of company’s assets

Mitigation Measures

  • Strictly follow security management framework and procedure
  • Security Management Plan Training on security practice following international standards
Environment

Impacts

  • Negative impacts on environment associated with air pollution emissions, improper waste management and other unplanned incidents.

Mitigation Measures

  • Environmental Management System (EMS)
  • Monitoring and reporting of environmental emission based on GC’s operation
  • Short-term and long-term mitigation measures and remediation
  • Develop environmental innovations and technology
  • Emergency management center (EMC)
Customers

Impacts

  • Health and safety
  • Discrimination
  • Data privacy

Mitigation Measures

  • Aligned with ISO 27001 and National Institute of standards and Technology (NIST)
  • Developed products by using the Eco-design Guideline and the Eco-design Criteria
  • Product Labels that include information for customer health and safety
  • Risk Assessment for hazardous substances in products, including Human Health Risk Assessment system (guidance, hazardous substance risk assessment criteria, and chemical risks control guideline), and environmental risk assessment
  • Customer relationship management system
  • Customer satisfaction survey
  • Customer complaint management

* Whistleblower channel (e.g. email, website, letter, welfare committee, etc.) is provided for all related rights holders.

From the Human Rights Impact Assessment, when considering existing measures to control the risks and mitigate impacts, it was found out that the level of risks for most human rights issues are within the low to moderate impact levels. However, there are four issues where the impacts are at a high level therefore additional measures have been implemented to mitigate as follows:

Impacts on Human Rights Additional Measures

Occupational health and safety
  • Re-assess health and safety plan and procedures to supplement the required actions to increase the health and safety performance
  • Conduct Morning Safety Talk to create safety culture to share experiences and lesson learnt regarding health and safety
  • Provide additional protective equipment and insurances in cases of crisis (e.g. pandemic)

Discrimination towards employee
  • Increase training frequency regarding discrimination and harassment in workplace
  • Communicate with employee that the information of the complainant or relevant witness will be confidential
  • Build positive corporate culture that encourages all employees to respect each other for their human rights and equality

Community health and safety
  • Continue developing technologies and innovations to prevent and reduce emission from business operation
  • Frequently monitoring and evaluating for waste management against the standards as well as assigning additional collective actions for those parameters that do not complying with the law
  • Establish a database for vulnerable groups where this will feed into developing emergency plans that takes into account these sensitive rights holders
  • Increase collaboration with local organizations (e.g. hospitals, universities, public health volunteers) to support CSR programs related to community health

Negative impacts on environment associated with air pollution emissions, improper waste management and other unplanned incidents.
  • Strictly execute the environmental mitigation measures and communicate with GC’s stakeholders that GC integrates environmental care into driving business towards sustainability
  • Create CSR programs related to environment through collaboration with stakeholders (e.g. community leaders, suppliers, contractors) to minimize environmental impacts that may or may not have originated from GC’s business operation

Remedies provided to those affected by business operation regarding human rights

The company has prepared measures for remedies for those who might be affected. Remedies are in the forms of financial and non-financial compensations to alleviate the suffering of those affected by human rights impacts caused by business operations.

The level of impact is considered on a case by case basis Immediate Solution. An example of this is the oil spill in 2013. 50,000 liters of crude oil leaked from the receiving pipe to the Aow Praow, Koh Samet shoreline on the 27th July 2013. GC immediately stepped in to solve the issue and provide compensation to those affected.

Immediate Solution

GC cleans up oil film within seven days after the incident. As well as assisted 11,500 affected persons totaling at 514 million baht. In a meanwhile, GC has been continuously providing remedies to communities in a compliance with law up until now.

Long-term Solution

GC has implemented several long-term projects in cooperation with the communities and governments to restore the lives of affected people, society, surrounding communities and effected environment. An example of this is the Upcycling the Oceans Thailand Project and the Fish Aggregating Device Project to Create Habitats for Marine Creatures. Additionally, GC has organized emergency training to handle potential unexpected situations which may happen in the future constantly.

Monitoring and Reviewing of the Human Rights Performance

GC regularly monitors and reviews its human rights performance by setting the target and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on human rights for the related departments and persons. Examples of KPIs include participation in human rights policy trainings, third-party verification on human rights, etc. GC also requires its business partners to perform self-assessment on human rights and monitor the suppliers through Environment, Social, Governance (ESG) Audit which covers labor, environment, human rights and community issues. On top of this, GC has provided channels to receive feedbacks and recommendations for its employees and outsiders. Recommendations which have been provided are used to improve existing plans, which allows GC to prevent and reduce the risks that could lead to human right violations.

Monitoring and reviewing process of the human rights performance

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Raising Awareness on Human Rights

Executives, employees and joint ventures shall pass training related to the human rights policies and operational guidelines regarding to the international standards, such as employee’s health and safety, and specific human rights issues for relevant personnel, including security guards and human resources personnel. This is to understand the basic human rights that individuals and related stakeholders should be obtained. In addition to protecting violation of human rights to not occur within the business operation and GC’s value chain. GC has prepared a human rights training system or E-learning so that all employees can receive knowledge and understanding of human rights that is related to operation.

Moreover, GC communicates and educates about human rights to suppliers at the annual Supplier Conference to ensure that the company’s suppliers is aware, understand and is alerted about human rights within the organization. For instance, human rights policy, human rights due diligence, human rights risk activities, the number of sites where has mitigation measures, human rights issues that related to vulnerable groups, such as children, community, migrant workers, safety working rights, rights to join the trade union or employee welfare committee to prevent risks and mitigate impacts on human rights which may occur with suppliers.