More than two-thirds of chief executive officers (69%) are worried about potential human rights and labor rights issues in their supply chains, according to a recent report released by Proxima.

In the organization’s study, entitled “Proxima’s Supply Chain Barometer 2023,” 28.2% of respondents said that they were very concerned about potential human rights or labor rights issues in their supply chain. An additional 40.7% of those surveyed said that they were quite concerned about those issues.

Mid-sized companies were found to be the most worried about human rights and labor issues since 76% of CEOs at mid-sized firms expressed concerns over the ethics in their supply chains.

Amongst the different sectors represented in the study, the retail market had the highest level of concern when it came to potential rights issues with 79% of CEOs saying that they are worried about these problems in their supply chains.

Regardless of industry, supply chains are considered incredibly important amongst chief executive officers because 51% of those surveyed said they plan on dedicating more time to supply chains over the next 12 months. CEOs in the financial sector had the highest response rate (65% said they would spend more time on supply chain issues over the next year) followed by the construction (59%) and automotive (54%) industries.

Executives are also interested in bringing their supply chains closer to home, with 43% of CEOs with a resiliency problem saying they are either already on-shoring or considering on-shoring their operations. That number comes in at 39% when it comes to near-shoring efforts. Meanwhile, four in ten CEOs said they are open to friend-shoring — moving supply chain operations to a country with good trade relations.

“CEOs must set the dial on risk vs resilience and ESG, as well as make the big calls on issues such as job vs supplier cost cuts and green light collaboration,” the report concluded. “One thing is for sure, CEOs and business leaders will be looking hard at both how suppliers can contribute and how to build the capabilities of their teams to deliver on the priorities they set.”

For Proxima’s 2023 Supply Chain Barometer report, the organization interviewed 2,000 CEOs from companies based in the United States and the United Kingdom. Half of the CEOs were from the U.S. while the other half were from the U.K.