HPE’s Human Rights Progress: A year in review
Progress made; progress to be made
- HPE has released its 3rd annual human rights report, detailing the company’s progress toward protecting people throughout its value chain
- Areas of progress include responsible use of technology, elevating visibility of modern slavery in supply chains, and empowering workers
On May 30, 2025, HPE released its 3rd annual Human Rights Report, reflecting our progress in advancing the company’s focus on protecting people throughout our value chain. As HPE’s Chief Operating and Legal Officer, this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Respect for human rights is about more than just complying with the law; it is a measure of our values as a company. Throughout its history, those values have been a differentiator for our customers, who can rest assured knowing that we do everything we can to source, manufacture, and deploy our products with the highest ethical standards, and that we work as advocates within our industry and beyond in service of advancing the way people live and work.
Respect for human rights is about more than just complying with the law; it is a measure of our values as a company
Here are a few key areas of progress:
(1) Responsible use of technology: HPE continues to advance the responsible use of our technology with a robust, and continuously optimized, human rights due diligence (HRDD) process built for the age of AI. Our HRDD assesses the degree, nature, and probability of risk based on know-your-customers principles, geography, product- including heightened review for AI applications, and purpose of use. We expect the same of our channel partners, ensuring that there’s little opportunity to end run our standards for the use of HPE technology. These reviews aren’t for show- HPE will block sales and prevent servicing if we aren’t satisfied that an opportunity doesn’t align with our values.
(2) Driving the conversation on modern slavery: In FY 24, HPE partnered with the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Rights, led by Baroness Theresa May of the United Kingdom, and The Anti-Slavery Collective, with a simple goal: to put modern slavery front and center at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos. I’m exceptionally proud that these efforts laid the groundwork for the Global Data Partnership against Forced Labor, which was jointly announced in January 2025 with the World Economic Forum. The partnership brings together leaders from business, government, and civil society with the goal of leveraging data to bridge critical data gaps and drive coordinated action to eradicate forced labor.
(3) Empowering workers: By 2030, HPE aims to ensure 100% compliance among our suppliers in three key areas of worker empowerment: the employer pays principle and no fees for recruitment, worker training on human rights, and effective grievance processes. In the last year, we made progress on all three goals by between 17 and 19 percent, positioning us well to achieve 100% compliance by our goal date.
Transparency is the best means of holding ourselves accountable
These are some of the many achievements HPE has to be proud of this year. But in the area of human rights, the work is never done. In the next year, HPE has goals to:
- Leverage learnings from our Social Impact in the Channel Project to drive uptake of our Roadmap.
- Continue to operationalize HPE’s AI Ethics Principles, building awareness and capability across the business, while focusing efforts on highest risk AI and effective implementation of safeguards.
- Advance our forced labor risk data analysis and evidence-based decision-making, extending engagement to sub-tier suppliers, increasing the number of supplier forced labor assessments and working across industry to drive data interoperability and better use of data.
We’ll report back again next year with an update on our progress, because transparency is the best means of holding ourselves accountable.