Responsible Exit

Responsible exit means the buyer does not simply walk away without planning. It makes a deliberate decision about how to disengage while considering worker impact, unfinished remediation, record retention, and the risk of making the situation worse.

In practice, this can mean pausing new orders, reducing exposure, setting final conditions, documenting the reasons, and deciding what support or protections still need to happen before the relationship ends.

Exit is one of the hardest decisions in responsible sourcing because a fast commercial answer can create unintended harm for workers if it is handled carelessly.

It also matters because repeated severe failures or non-cooperation eventually force the program to show whether consequences are real.

Responsible exit is not the same as endless patience. The point is not to avoid hard consequences; it is to apply them in a way that is documented, defensible, and conscious of downstream harm.

Teams should usually read this together with SRM, remediation quality, and zero-tolerance handling rather than as a standalone legal step.