The shift in recent years towards a more sustainable global economy has seen an increasing focus on how businesses address human rights and potential labour exploitation in their supply chains. Companies are now expected to go beyond public commitments, and face the task of operationalising human rights policies in a transparent fashion. Credible standards organisations have proven to be important tools to bridge the implementation gap of these policies, raising the question of how standards systems are equipped to identify forced labour and what happens when cases are detected.