Investor advocacy and shareholder action on human rights topics have reached unprecedented levels this year. Five of the largest global tech companies—Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Twitter—all faced a record number of shareholder resolutions. The rise of investing based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors has been a key driver of this trend. Civil society groups like RDR are providing the human rights standards and stories that allow investors to evaluate their holdings’ commitment to a better tomorrow.
Today we are proud to meet the evolving needs of investors with an update to our Investor Guidance page. Working with the investor community is in RDR’s DNA. We developed our very first Corporate Accountability Index in 2015 in partnership with leading ESG research provider Sustainalytics. Our work since then has been suffused with investor partnerships aimed at better protecting human rights. Today’s update illuminates how our work with shareholders has evolved in light of the surge of ESG-driven investor engagement and what digital rights topics have emerged as key investor priorities.
- First, we are publishing more details about the impact of our work with investors. This includes joint undertakings with individual asset managers, but also sweeping projects like the Digital Rights Engagement Initiative, coordinated by the Investor Alliance for Human Rights. The initiative consists of coordinated outreach to individual companies by the 177 signatories of the Investor Statement on Corporate Accountability for Digital Rights, which calls on companies to report on their progress on digital rights and is based on RDR’s standards.
- Second, we are updating and enriching our shareholder resolutions data with information about the outcomes of each resolution, including the result of the final vote. We are also bringing together stories about the direct and indirect impact of these votes: news reports, company announcements, and new campaigns inspired by each resolution. With this update, we are also marking resolutions that cite RDR and those whose development we supported directly.
- Finally, we are creating a separate “Spotlight” space highlighting insights from members of the RDR team on topics we consider critical to both shareholders’ rights and to our human rights-based mission. Our inaugural Spotlight is our mini-report on bringing down barriers to shareholder advocacy.
Delving into the new data we are publishing today highlights noteworthy trends in investor behavior. Shareholders are revealing an increasingly nuanced understanding of the human rights impact of companies’ existing and emerging operations. Alphabet (Google), for instance, faced a petition this year calling on the tech giant to assess the impacts of its plans to build data centers in human rights hotspots such as Saudi Arabia. At Amazon, resolutions calling out the human rights violations enabled by its facial recognition and surveillance products continued to gain traction, winning a robust 40% of shareholder votes. Calls at both Meta and Google to terminate their multi-class share structures, which allow powerful executives to artificially dilute majority support for such resolutions, won near-unanimous support from independent shareholders, setting an all-time record.
Meanwhile, RDR’s involvement in shareholder resolutions has also evolved in the past two years: from providing data points to directly shaping them alongside activist investors. Our Scorecards provide a balanced assessment of more than two dozen companies. Where we see a company’s disclosures on a key topic persistently lagging behind, we help forge collective efforts to push them to improve. This year, we helped craft a proposal that called on Meta to assess the human rights impacts of its targeted ad-based business model, which won the support of over 70% of independent shareholders. We also worked with shareholders to call for an assessment of Google’s FLoC ad technology, which likely influenced the company’s decision to terminate the program.
Improving the behavior of powerful actors requires persistent effort over time. This understanding is baked into our research and rankings, which track the yearly ebb and flow of companies’ disclosures about how they protect users’ rights. It is baked into our policy engagement, which provides guidance for lawmakers to shape new legislation. It is baked into our work with advocacy partners around the world who adapt our methodology to create new windows of scrutiny. And it is baked into our collaboration with investors, who represent an increasingly powerful source of pressure on companies to act responsibly. We strive to connect these streams whenever possible.
Civil society watchdogs, the responsible investor community, and those working to reform companies from within share a common goal: strengthening corporate accountability and protecting human rights. Today’s update is one more step toward bringing these communities together and showing how their common goal can be achieved.
