Our Peer Collaboration Efforts to Promote Human Rights in the Supply Chain

Two ways that we've recently promoted peer learning on human rights are through the UK Capacity Build Engagement Day that we held in September, and through our collaboration with King's Business School (KBS) and the British Standards Institute (BSI). 

As a part of our human rights commitments, we have agreed to carry out an annual on-site engagement day. In September, we piloted this on-site engagement by holding a Human Rights Capacity Building and Site Engagement session at our Bramford to Twinstead substation in collaboration with our partners at the Slave Free Alliance and Murphy Group. The initiative combined document review, site observation, talks, and discussions with workers and supervisors, reaching more than 45 people across a range of roles and experience levels. These activities tested how effectively decent work standards are being implemented on site, identified where further support may be beneficial, and surfaced practical lessons for continuous improvement across future projects. We plan to continue doing on-site engagement at different locations in the UK and US.

Beyond leveraging the learnings from the pilot ourselves, we felt it was important to share with peers and promote human rights across the supply chain. In November, we presented lessons learned and our best practice strategies at the annual Slave Free Alliance Conference in Manchester. This conference unites policymakers, practitioners, and industry leaders to strengthen alignment with emerging global regulations and embed human rights due diligence as a core organisational practice. Beyond compliance, the event fostered a holistic shift, enhancing worker voice, promoting ethical governance, and encouraging collaborative, system- wide resilience. Ultimately, this will support a more just, transparent and accountable global business environment.

Image

We've also shared our knowledge and best practices on human rights engagement through our collaboration with King's Business School and the British Standards Institute. Through this collaboration, we conducted a lab session in October with some of our supplier network from Electricity Transmission to present how we've used the BSI Human Rights Standards and to engage with them on the importance of human rights. We've also held in-person workshops with suppliers on our use of the BSI Standards in shaping our human rights action plan, presented a case study on human rights governance at the BSI/ KBS Conference, and participated in KBS led discussions on leadership challenges in the sector. King's Business School is expected to publish a white paper with findings from the BSI/KBS partnership and National Grid's work in the spring of 2026.