The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) announced today the release of for new exposure drafts of updates to its key standards aimed at enabling companies to disclose on labor rights issues across their value chains, across topics including forced labor, child labor, and labor rights.

GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards are one of the most commonly accepted global standards for sustainability disclosure by companies, developed to enable consistent reporting across companies and industries, providing clearer communication regarding sustainability matters to a broad range of stakeholders, including investors. The GRI’s standards are developed by the Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB).

GRI’s labor standards are aimed at enabling organizations to publicly disclose their most significant impacts on workers and how they are managing those impacts. The release of the new draft standards forms part of a wider review of GRI’s labor-related disclosures as part of the organization’s Labor Project, initiated by the GSSB in 2022. In total, the project aims to revise eight of its labor-related standards, with publication of the new standards expected to begin from mid-2026.

The new publications include exposure drafts for GRI standards including Workers in Business Relationships (GRI 414), Forced Labor (GRI 409); Child Labor (GRI 408) and Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining (GRI 407), covering disclosures for organizations on their impacts on these issues, and how they manage those impacts. According to the GRI, the proposed revised standards increase coverage on labor rights and working conditions, including due diligence processes, incident reporting, grievance mechanisms, and engagement with worker representatives, and include new disclosures on policies and assessments across organizations’ activities and business relationships, with stronger requirements for incidents reporting, prevention, and remediation actions.

The GRI added that the revised standards reflect growing demands for organizations to tackle negative impacts on workers in their value chains, and come in response to persistent challenges worldwide, including worker poverty, rising informal work, entrenched gender inequalities, and slow progress in ending child and forced labor.

GRI launched a public comment period on the new draft standards, which will remain open through March 9, 2026. Click here to access the exposure drafts and consultation.

Harold Pauwels, GRI Standards Director, said:

“Respect for workers’ rights is non-negotiable for any organization that claims to do business responsibly. Our revised Standards aim to set clearer expectations for how companies identify their labor-related impacts and risks, involve workers, and make improvements in their own operations and across value chains.”