The World Benchmarking Alliance found that 90 percent of the world’s 2,000 most influential companies do not meet social expectations relating to human rights, in its report published on Tuesday. The Alliance called on policymakers and investors to ensure companies are being held accountable for protecting labour rights.

The report found that companies which are based in countries that have human rights regulations scored 60 percent higher on average compared to companies based in countries with no related regulations. The report also found that only 20% of companies conduct some human rights due diligence.

In terms of a living wage and reasonable working hours, the report discovered that only 4 percent of companies “commit to or are actually paying their employees a living wage” that conforms with International Labour Organization (ILO) standards. This highlights the importance of setting minimum legal human rights standards.

In addition, only 3 percent of the companies have a working hours policy that complies with the standard. In 1935, the ILO member states concluded the Forty-Hour Week Convention that established the principle of a forty-hour week to reduce the working hours and ensured that workers should be enabled to share in the benefits of the rapid technical progress as a characteristic of modern industry.

The report also flagged the need for private sector sustainability strategies to cohere with lobbying activities and recommended that companies actively engage with stakeholders affected by their business activities.

The World Benchmarking Alliance is an organization that intends to identify human rights areas in which the most influential companies in the private sector can improve. The organization then rates the progress of individual companies to incentivize compliance with human rights standards. Its Social Benchmark evaluates how the most influential companies in the world meet “society’s fundamental expectations towards three measurement areas – respecting human rights, providing decent work, and acting ethically.”

The Alliance sources its human rights standards from the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPBHR). A central aspect of the UNGPBHR is advocating human rights due diligence, which demands that companies proactively take steps to avoid human rights violations and create organizational structures that mitigate violations when they do occur.