Sarah Hechler

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108 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 15 Jul

Sarah Hechler’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Frankly Speaking - A Podcast on Responsible Business · #115 Sarah Hechler & Christopher Bayer: How Well Are German Companies Doing HREDD? · 15 Jul 2026 podcast

And rather than just saying, oh, that's not good enough for us and closing the case, the company started talking to that NGO, explaining the issue.

And a few weeks later, the NGO reached out again.

And they had a different case, but they reached out much earlier and they shared much more precise information, which allowed the company to actually react in time and prevent a more severe violation.

And I think this is really indicative of of what Chris was saying.

So a hundred percent of our companies have a grievance mechanism, the system is out there.

But then only sixteen percent actually look at whether people trust the mechanism enough to use it.

And that's where we're really losing some really valuable insights that could help you actually prevent bad publicity as well.

The the interesting part of this is that I'm speaking from the point of view of a voluntary initiative.

The Union Global Compact is voluntary.

So we really believe in this kind of buzzword of the smart mix that you need a smart mix between voluntary initiatives and requirements and regulatory requirements.

The beauty of our German act is that we have a before and after.

So the history of this act is that we originally had a national action plan, which was which was voluntary, and then the government did a study of how

Many uh companies actually ended up s uh setting uh setting up human rights systems.

And that was about thirteen to seventeen percent.

So they said, that's not enough.

We need regulation.

And we can now show with our study that we now have ninety-seven to ninety-eight percent of companies with human rights management systems.

So we definitely see an increase as a result of regulation, and we definitely see regulation also having an impact if it is well done and accompanied by

voluntary initiatives.

I do have to disappoint my colleagues though who already want to steal Chris away.

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