Fair Labor Association Investor Roundtable (FLAIR)

As expectations around human rights due diligence continue to grow, investors are increasingly recognizing that effective stewardship requires a deeper understanding of how companies identify, prevent, mitigate, and address human rights risks throughout their value chains. Many investors have developed sophisticated approaches to human rights engagement. 

At the same time, experience has shown that achieving lasting progress often requires moving beyond isolated interactions and fostering more continuous, constructive dialogue with companies and other actors connected to value-chain impacts.

Fair Labor Association Investor Roundtable (FLAIR) is set up as a collaborative investor engagement pilot initiative, convened by the Fair Labor Association (FLA). 

Objective 

Building on investors’ experience engaging companies on human rights issues and drawing on the FLA’s expertise on labor standards across global value chains, FLAIR aims to strengthen dialogue between investors and investee companies on human rights and Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD). FLAIR provides a structured platform through which investors can engage companies more effectively.

Through its pilot phase, FLAIR aims to enhance the quality and effectiveness of investor engagement on human rights. By fostering informed dialogue, promoting better understanding of value-chain impacts, and supporting the implementation of robust human rights due diligence practices, FLAIR seeks to contribute to more sustainable business practices and better outcomes for workers and communities.

Ultimately, FLAIR’s ambition is to help investors and companies move beyond a reactive approach to human rights risks and toward an HRDD model centered on prevention, continuous improvement, and long-term value creation.

Project

FLAIR supports engagement that is forward-looking, practical, and focused on continuous improvement. Through structured dialogue, investors and companies can discuss challenges, share perspectives, and explore approaches for strengthening human rights practices and improving working conditions and the lives of the workers, across global value chains.

To support this dialogue, FLAIR provides:

• A shared engagement framework that helps investors align around key human rights priorities and engagement objectives. 
• The FLAIR Maturity Framework, which guides investor-company dialogue on HRDD implementation.
• Expert guidance and capacity building, including workshops, webinars, and access to practical human rights expertise and tools.
• Structured engagement opportunities that enable meaningful exchanges between investors and company representatives responsible for human rights and sustainability issues.

How FLAIR Creates Value

For investors

FLAIR strengthens investors’ ability to exercise active ownership by providing a collaborative framework for engaging investee companies on human rights issues. It helps investors deepen their understanding of value-chain risks and impacts, access specialized expertise, and develop more informed and impactful stewardship approaches.

For companies

FLAIR offers companies a constructive setting to engage with investors on human rights challenges and opportunities. Through dialogue, companies can better understand investor expectations, discuss practical implementation challenges, share progress and lessons learned, and identify opportunities to strengthen human rights integration across their operations and value chains.