Overview

This session will explore new market-driven approaches to help drive the adoption of ethical recruitment practices in Asia.

The Ethical Recruitment Marketplace is an industry-led initiative that aims to take a new approach to addressing ethical recruitment challenges by applying an economic lens to address the root causes of exploitative recruitment practices.

The Marketplace recognises that in order for ethical recruitment to become the norm, it must be supported by sustainable and viable business models - ensuring that ethical recruitment works for the benefit of workers, employers, downstream buyers and brands, as well as origin and destination country governments. The Marketplace aims to achieve this by applying a holistic and end-to-end approach to addressing persistent root cause drivers of exploitative recruitment. These include:

• Integrating responsible recruitment considerations into responsible purchasing and procurement frameworks;

• Supporting labour recruiters to transition from traditional to ethical business models;

• Developing pathways to support implementation and coverage gaps in ethical recruitment certification schemes;

• Lowering compliance costs and burdens associated with ethical recruitment;

• Promoting inclusive and worker-driven approaches to recruitment due diligence;

• Providing a transparent global database of recruitment fees and costs; and

• Advocating for an enabling policy environment that supports ethical recruitment business models.

Why it matters

Through the ecosystem of shared initiatives under the Marketplace, we aim to achieve genuine transformation at the root cause level to embed ethical recruitment as the norm. Not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is supported by a sustainable business model.

Key questions

• How can we embed Ethical Recruitment as a sustainable and viable business models?

• How can the private sector support the adoption of ethical recruitment practices across the supply chain?

• How should the costs of ethical recruitment be allocated among actors in the supply chain?

  
  

Who should attend?

• Private sector ( buyers / brands / manufacturers)

• Labour recruiters

• Worker organisations

• Migrant workers

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What participants will gain

During this session, participants will explore and share practical tools, resources, and outputs of the Ethical Recruitment Marketplace program, and discuss how these can be embedded within their operations and supply chain, including tangible examples of company action.

These include: a global database of worker-paid recruitment fees and costs, a progression framework for labour recruiters to transition from traditional to ethical business models, and inclusive and worker-driven recruitment due diligence models.

Participants will explore how moving away from a purely compliance-driven approach to ethical recruitment, and adopting a more holistic approach that considers economic drivers of exploitative recruitment, can yield sustainable and long-term benefits for workers, labour recruiters, employers, and buyers / brands.

Participants will gain an understanding of how to embed sustainable, viable ethical recruitment business models within their own operations and value chains.