How does ETI hold its members accountable? 

ETI's accountability framework is one of the things that most distinguishes us from other responsible business initiatives — and it is worth understanding in some detail, because it operates at several levels simultaneously.

At the foundation is the ETI Member Charter, which every company joining ETI signs up to. The Charter sets out what membership requires: a genuine commitment to implementing human rights due diligence across supply chains, active engagement with ETI's programmes and community, and transparent reporting on progress. These are not aspirational statements — they are conditions of membership.

Reporting against the Corporate Transparency Framework

Each year, ETI member companies report against our Corporate Transparency Framework (CTF), which assesses the quality and depth of their human rights due diligence across a range of criteria — from governance and policy through to supplier engagement, worker voice and remedy. ETI publishes the results of this assessment publicly, meaning that how individual members are performing against the framework is visible to investors, civil society, regulators and the public. This public dimension is significant: it creates a real accountability dynamic that self-reported policies and private audit programmes simply cannot replicate.

Support before sanction

ETI's approach to accountability is not primarily punitive. When members are struggling to make progress, our first response is to understand why and to provide the support, guidance and peer learning needed to get back on track. We recognise that improving labour standards in complex global supply chains is genuinely hard, and that the journey matters as much as the destination.

But support has limits. Members who persistently fail to demonstrate meaningful progress, or who are found to have acted in ways fundamentally incompatible with ETI's values and standards, face formal review and can be — and have been — terminated from membership. Membership of ETI is earned through genuine engagement, year on year.

Accountability built into our structure

Perhaps most distinctively, ETI's accountability framework is not administered by ETI staff alone. Because our governance includes trade unions and NGOs alongside companies, members are held to account by the very organisations that represent workers' interests and have direct knowledge of conditions on the ground. This tripartite accountability is structural — it is built into how ETI works — and it gives ETI member status a credibility that no company-administered certification can match.

See how our members are performing against the Corporate Transparency Framework
Read the ETI Member Charter
Find out about ETI membership