Globalworks

What Globalworks does

Globalworks is a small Swedish not-for-profit research enterprise, formally constituted as Globalworks Lund AB and headquartered in Lund, Sweden. Founded in 2013, the firm specializes in human rights due diligence research that uses social media data to surface worker grievances and rights violations in global supply chains, particularly in jurisdictions where traditional physical audits are infeasible.

The company's core technology is social@risk™, a proprietary analytical framework that combines custom language-expert-driven web crawlers with NLP-based text structuring, clustering, keyword filtering, and trend analysis to process corpora ranging from thousands to millions of social media posts. Experts interpret findings against legal and ethical standards such as the Better Work Compliance Assessment Tool, producing qualitative and quantitative risk assessments. The methodology follows a two-stage service model: an initial Exploratory Study to assess feasibility, followed by comprehensive Full-Scale Studies with defined deliverables.

Globalworks operates a sales-led go-to-market through commissioned research projects for public authorities, civil society organizations, and private sector companies, supplemented by R&D grants from Swedish (Vinnova) and European (Horizon 2020) government innovation agencies, as well as organizations such as ETI Sweden. Named clients are predominantly Swedish public-sector bodies and NGOs, with recent sector expansion into fast fashion (Shein/Temu), batteries/electric buses (BYD, CATL, EVE Energy), and locomotive supply chains in China. Despite the not-for-profit framing, Globalworks functions as an aktiebolag with a small multidisciplinary team of researchers, data scientists, and editors.

Name

Globalworks

Legal name

Globalworks Lund AB

Website

https://globalworks.se

Company type

Private

Founded year

2013

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Globalworks is a Swedish not-for-profit research firm that conducts human rights due diligence by analyzing large-scale social media text corpora via its proprietary social@risk™ framework, serving public authorities, civil society organizations, and companies with supply chain risk assessments.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Human Rights Due Diligence Services

NAICS

Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities (541720), Management Consulting Services (54161)

SIC

Services-Engineering, Accounting, Research, Management (8700), Services-Management Consulting Services (8742)

akta.pro primary industry

Human Rights Monitoring, Documentation & Advocacy (BPADAGAK)

akta.pro secondary industries

Supply Chain Sustainability & Responsible Sourcing (SMETA, supplier ESG) (EUAHAJAE), Humanitarian Coordination, Information Management & Needs Assessment (BPADADAL)

Keywords

• Human rights due diligence
• Supply chain risk assessment
• Social media analytics
• Worker grievance analysis
• Rights holder research

Headquarters

HQ city

Lund

HQ country

Sweden

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Research services and grants: Globalworks is a not-for-profit enterprise that conducts human rights research funded by public agencies and commissioned by civil society organizations and companies. Revenue comes from R&D funding (Vinnova, Horizon 2020), commissioned research projects, and grants from organizations like ETI Sweden.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels1 record

Core offering

Globalworks provides human rights due diligence research services using its proprietary social@risk™ analytical framework to collect, structure, and analyze large text corpora from social media for the purpose of identifying grievances and human rights violations in global supply chains. Services follow a two-stage methodology consisting of an initial Explorative Study (feasibility assessment, design, expert identification, and method selection) followed by a Full-Scale Study (comprehensive data collection, analysis, and detailed reporting).

Product overview

Globalworks is a not-for-profit enterprise that provides human rights due diligence research services. The core offering consists of the social@risk™ analytical framework combined with two service offerings: Explorative Studies and Full-Scale Studies. social@risk™ is their proprietary technology platform that enables qualitative and quantitative analysis of large text corpora from social media to identify grievances and human rights violations. Their services follow a two-stage methodology: an initial Explorative Study to assess feasibility, followed by comprehensive Full-Scale Studies that deliver detailed risk assessments for clients including public authorities, civil society organizations, and companies.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• social@risk™: An analytical framework for quantitative and qualitative analysis of large text corpora, used to identify grievances and human rights violations from social media data.

Products and services

• social@risk™ An analytical framework for quantitative and qualitative analysis of large text corpora from social media, enabling experts to identify posts about grievances and rights violations, structure and cluster text data, apply advanced keyword filtering, correlate risk factors, and evaluate trends for human rights risk assessment.
• Explorative Study Initial research phase service that develops a preliminary research design, identifies relevant subject-matter experts, assesses data availability and quality, and selects appropriate data analysis methods to evaluate feasibility before committing to a full-scale study.
• Full-Scale Study Comprehensive commissioned research service building on the explorative study design, with extensive data collection, specified analytical goals, defined deliverables, and comprehensive reporting covering background, methods, findings, and conclusions on human rights risks.

Named customers7 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability4 records

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Vaude Sport GmbHcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2017Partnered to conduct first grievance-based social risk assessments in Chinese electronics and textile sector.
• Stockholm County CouncilcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2017Partnered to conduct first grievance-based social risk assessments in Chinese electronics and textile sector.

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Emerging players

• KnowTheChain: KnowTheChain benchmarks major brands on efforts to address forced labour in supply chains. It is an adjacent research and benchmarking initiative that informs the same HRDD market Globalworks serves and often recommends specialist providers to buyers.
• Quill (formerly Edmin): Quill (originally Quaestio) is a worker engagement platform used in garment supply chains to surface grievances directly to brands and suppliers. It is an emerging tech-enabled worker-voice player competing for the same HRDD mandate with a more structured survey model.
• LaborVoices: LaborVoices (now operating as Laborlink) collects anonymous worker feedback via mobile phones for supply chain social compliance. It overlaps with Globalworks' worker grievance mining but relies on direct worker surveys rather than passive social media monitoring.

Direct peers

• Ulula: Ulula is a worker-voice and supply-chain due diligence platform that collects grievances from workers via mobile and other channels to surface human rights risks. It is the closest direct competitor to Globalworks' social@risk™ in using technology-enabled worker feedback for HRDD in global supply chains.
• Issara Institute: Issara operates a worker voice platform and analytics service focused on forced labour and migrant worker conditions in Southeast Asian supply chains. Its data-driven approach to surfacing worker grievances parallels Globalworks' methodology in comparable geographies and sectors.

Broad incumbents

• EcoVadis: EcoVadis is a global leader in business sustainability ratings, providing supply chain ESG and human rights assessments to enterprise buyers. It is a broader incumbent addressing the same corporate HRDD buyer that Globalworks serves, with worker voice as a complementary offering.
• RepRisk: RepRisk is an ESG data science firm that uses machine learning on news and stakeholder data to flag human rights and environmental risks for investors and corporates. It competes for the same due-diligence buyer with automated, source-agnostic monitoring versus Globalworks' expert-led, language-specific approach.
• Verisk Maplecroft: Maplecroft produces human rights and political risk indices used by multinationals for supply chain and country risk decisions. It is a broad incumbent serving the same HRDD buyer with desk-based analytics rather than primary grievance data, making it a partial substitute.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/globalworks-lund-ab

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles5 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Globalworks