Five years after the unanimous endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights by the UN Human Rights Council, companies and their stakeholders have a clear global standard on the expectation that business will respect human rights. Since that time, companies around the world have been pressing ahead, implementing the Guiding Principles in their policies and practices. The most common thing we hear from companies is that this is an ongoing process that brings real challenges, as well as constant opportunities for learning and improvement. Successfully undertaking this process requires field-tested and tangible guidance. With this publication – the product of a unique, multi-year collaboration between companies, civil society and issue experts – we hope to offer companies a ‘must-read’ foundational guide on how to implement respect for human rights in line with the Guiding Principles. This guidance is more than a theoretical explanation of what the Guiding Principles say; it is based on real experiences of companies, and their stakeholders, in diverse and complex situations. Those situations range from pulp milling in Indonesia to alternative energy projects in Mexico, and from banking in South Africa to clothing manufacturing in Turkey. From 2014–16, in close collaboration with Oxfam affiliates and Global Compact local networks in each of these four countries, we explored what respecting human rights means on the ground in highly different contexts. Case stories from those countries are featured on the project’s website at www.businessrespecthumanrights.org.