Prepare for publicly disclosing your company’s due diligence assessments with our management system.
Are you ready to publish the due diligence statement publicly?
In this article we will provide you with an explenation of what a public disclosure is and how businesses can effectivly work to comply with the Transparency Act.
Our system is developed to handle the Transparency Act with a risk-based approach. This enables you to impact the consequences in the supply chain and lower risks across the board.
The Transparency Act, sometimes reffered to as “The Public Access to Information Act” requires organisations that fall under it’s scope to promote their due diligence efforts in a public disclosure. The disclosure, also reffered to as the “mandatory due diligence report”, must met the minimum requirements set forth in the first section of §5 a-c of the Transparency Act, and must be published within 30th of June each year.
So, how do you start? As companies are scrambling to meet the new requirements it’s only natural to believe that you`ll need to expand the compliance budget by alot. If you happen to aquire a compliance software that makes due diligence work easy, this isn’t allways nescessarily the case.
In the image below, you can see the OECD Norway`s “due diligence wheel”, which describes the following 6 steps (All of which your current staff can handle with ease in Transparency Gate.)
Organisations, businesses, lawyers, compliance, accountants and HR, and sustainability managers have slightly different approaches to working with due diligence assessments in the supply chain. With Transparency Gate, we’ve simplified everything with all the guidance and tools you’ll need to handle the Transparency Act and get ready for public reporting every year. (As well as actually lowering the risks to the conditions in the supply chain that’s governed by the Act.)
The Transparency Act and the Norwegian Consumer Authority recommend following the OECD guidelines for due diligence. The process is described in the image and is intended to provide guidance for responsible corporate governance.
Assuming that you’ve allready anchored accountability in the board, established guidelines, and selected a management system, there are really only three steps left to build and publish the yearly report.
This is a list of twelve important questions that each of the 9000 businesses covered by the Transparency Act should have answers and documentation to, before the report is publicly disclosed. We also recommend reading the Norwegian Consumer Authority’s Guidelines for Due Diligence Assessments.
When the three steps we went through earlier are completed, you are ready to publicly disclose how the business handles actual and potential consequences for violations of human rights and decent working conditions.
It is recommended that the report is published on the respective website(s) of the business by the deadline of June 30, 2023, and updated annually. The report can also be included in the annual report or the corporate social responsibility report according to §3-3c of the Accounting Act.
If measures are taken or significant changes are detected in the risk picture related to the Transparency Act and the OECD Guidelines, the statement must be updated regardless of the annual deadline for public disclosure.
The public statement and any changes to the statement shall be signed in accordance with the rules in §3-5 of the Accounting Act, and shall include the CEO and board members.
Our solution is set up according to best practices, the Transparency Act, OECD’s guidelines and international laws.
Conduct due diligence on your organization, supply chain and govern risks according to The Transparency A §4 a-f.
Publish the report on your website and open a communication channel for the public’s right to learn about how the organization handles due diligence.
YOU CAN HANDLE EVERYTHING IN TRANSPARENCY GATE
The Transparency ACt Reduces Risk
The Transparency Act ensures transparency about businesses’ respect for human rights and working conditions in connection with the production, and delivery of products and services.
With a complete overview of suppliers, their due diligence assessments and associated organizations, it is easier to identify risks in the supply chain and implement control measures where they have most impact.
Explore our control system for compliance with the Transparency Act and OECD Guidelines, or simply contact us to get started today.
Our system is easy to use and comes with several tools for risk control, statistics, and reporting.
Here are frequently asked questions about public disclosure of due dilicence assessments. Did you know we also have a knowledge base? Feel free to navigate there through the link: Explore our Knowledge Base.
If you have further questions or wish to speak with one of our experts, please use this link: Contact us.
Short answer: Yes. In most cases the current HR-staff are more than capable to handle the Transparency Act and it’s requirements as long as they have a management system. Considering they allready have related responsibilities, they can easily handle the requirements set by the Transparency Act too.
We recommend taking a course that covers at least these main topics: the Transparency Act, OECD Guidelines, Due Diligence assessments, and how to work with risks to potential and actual impacts to a company’s supply chain.
In most cases the current staff are more than capable to handle the day-to-day Transparency Act activities and make sure your company complies with it’s requirements. Considering they`re allready working with sustainability, compliance, ESG and related responsibilities, they can, in most cases, easily handle the requirements set by the Transparency Act aswell.
It’s however, recommended that all staff that are working with this uses a management system specificly built for compliance with the Transparency Act and that they take a course that covers these three main topics: the Transparency Act, OECD Guidelines, Due Diligence assessments, and how to work with risks to potential and actual impacts to a company’s supply chain.
Lawyers can be crucial in mapping the juridical landscape for business entities and conducting supply chain control, especially in larger enterprices that has diverse impacts to human rights in multiple layers of the world supply chain, but also they can’t work effectivly with the Transparency Act or OECD Guidelines without a management system designed for supply chain risk control.
According to the Transparency Act and the OECD the meaning is; “The detailed examination of a company and it’s records of work to control the risk to actual and potential consequences to conditions in the supply chain and human rights.
The three principles of due diligence are; Identify, prevent and account.
You can read more about how this is governed by the Transparency Act.
The purchaser or buyer is responsible for conducting due diligence because it’s in the purchaser’s interest to ensure it will receive exactly what has been promised by the supplier.
According to the Transparency Act the owners of the company that buys and sells products, services or goods, has the responsibility for due diligence.
Financial due diligence is a crucial assessment of the financial health of a business. History and current performance is put under the microscope to enable future forecasts and identify potential risks.
According to the Accounting Act, a summary of the due diligence assessment created in accordance with the Transparency Act, should be included in the financial statement.
Depending on how the company organizes the due diligence work relating to adverse impacts on human rights and supply chain risk, it can be natural in many cases that internal responsibility falls under the scope of Sustainability, ESG or GRC departments.
Here are some useful resources relating to the public statement of companies due diligence assessments and the Transparency Act. In collaboration with compliance experts and authorative sources we`ve manufactured some control documents that you can get for free;
To request the Guide, Document or Template please send us an email at [email protected] and it’ll be with you shortly.