How ISO Standards Can Guide Your Sustainability Journey
There is no single activity that can help your organization reach its sustainability goals over night, however key ISO certifications can help guide you to success.Read More
International Standards for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Better Business Practices Start Now
Over the last few years, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained importance on global level, with industry-led certifications helping to pave a cohesive way for businesses to address pressing environmental, ethical and human rights responsibilities.
These certifications validate an organization's commitment to consumers, employees and stakeholders, ultimately endorsing a strategic approach to responsible business processes and principles.
Holding your supply chain accountable while ensuring quality performance can be challenging, but managing your audit process shouldn't be.
Contact Our Team
The Value of Implementing Industry-Led Certifications
Social responsibility is a key element of the business value proposition, and failure in this regard can negatively impact financial results and brand image. Implementing social accountability certifications helps to provide your customers with peace of mind in buying ethically and responsibly produced products, and shows a commitment to the health and safety of your workforce and to continuously improving your operations.
Understanding CSR Standards
When you are audited to any industry-led certification or International Organization of Standardization standard (ISO) by a certification body, you are telling your customers that you have a system in place tasked with ensuring the quality performance of your suppliers and your facilities while providing a safe and equal work environment for your workforce.
CSR Certifications
Benefits of CSR Certifications
Brand Reputation
- Increase brand reputation through compliance with global standards
- Demonstrate your organization's commitment to social accountability
- Enhance brand image and reputation
Demonstrate Quality
- Can improve customer retention and loyalty
- Can increase business opportunities
- Helps you provide the best in customer satisfaction
Establish Trust
- Strengthen the relationships between service providers and clients
- Helps to ensure fair treatment of employees
- Increased support for local and global communities
SA8000® - Social Accountability Standard
Created by in 1997, SA8000® encourages organizations to develop, maintain and apply socially acceptable practices in the workplace to improve working conditions.
Through an auditable certification, SA8000 measures the performance of an organization in nine key areas: Child Labor, Forced or Compulsory Labor, Health and Safety, Freedom of Association and Right to Collective Bargaining, Discrimination, Disciplinary Practices, Working Hours, Remuneration and Management System.
SA8000 can be combined with other management systems such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001.
Benefits of SA8000 Certification
- Bolsters company reputation
- Can help improve quality and productivity
- Helps to improve hazard and risk detection
- Can help increase supply chain control
- Enhances brand image
- Helps to buoy employee morale
- Designed to help improve the management and performance of supply chain and management
Close
BSCI - Business Social Compliance Initiative
The Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI), managed by , is a social compliance certification that helps companies improve social performance across the entire supply chain, allowing an organization to monitor its supply chain to ensure that all suppliers are treating workers ethically and legally.
As a premier USA-based certification body for BSCI audits, ABS QE is uniquely positioned to help your company ensure it’s meeting its goals for supply chain social compliance.
Benefits of BSCI
- Designed to help working conditions, compensation and benefits for workers along the supply chain
- Enriches relationships with suppliers
- Supports your SA8000 certification process
- Enhances company and brand reputation
- Can expand potential work opportunities
Benefits of BSCI
SEDEX SMETA
The Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA) is a social compliance audit program that helps companies assess and improve the social and environmental performance of their sites and suppliers. SMETA was created by the , a not-for-profit, online global membership organization that works with buyers and suppliers to improve their responsible and ethical business practices.
SEDEX members can use the online global platform to share information about their supply chains, conduct SMETA audits, share audit results and collaborate with other businesses on supply chain management that can be used to improve transparency and accountability.
Once the audit is completed, ABS QE will provide you or your supplier with a Corrective Action Plan to help improve performance in the indentified areas.
Benefits of SEDEX SMETA
- Helps to simplify regulatory compliance
- Helps to identify higher risk suppliers
- Can help to improve supplier performance
- Designed to verify ethical behavior within your operations and at supplier sites
- Accelerates supplier auditing through data sharing
Benefits of SEDEX SMETA
Sourcing Audits
Sourcing audits employ a third party to help companies identify the best sources for products to ensure quality components or services are delivered on schedule at a competitive price. The scope of a sourcing audit can be broad, encompassing facility conditions, worker treatment and compensation, hiring processes, environmental practices and compliance with applicable laws. Because sourcing audits are performed at the behest of a company, they do not follow a prescribed time interval. Reports generally include findings, recommendations for corrective action and a timeline for implementation.
ABS QE can perform audits to your specifications, helping to ensure that the organizations supplying products to your company meet your exacting standards.
Benefits of Sourcing Audits
- Helps to improve supplier performance and reliability
- Can reduce risk of supply chain disruption
- Helps to improve decision-making
- Designed to increase transparency, allowing supplier and purchaser to build trust and work collaboratively
Benefits of Sourcing Audits
Factory Assessments
Factory assessments employ a third party to provide an objective assessment of the quality of the products or services produced, the safety culture, working conditions, the environmental impact of operations and the extent to which the factory complies with applicable laws, regulations and standards.
Because factory assessments are performed at the request of a company, they don’t follow a prescribed time interval. Reports generated following an assessment typically include findings, recommendations for corrective action and a timeline for implementation.
ABS QE can perform factory assessments to your specifications to help ensure that the organizations manufacturing products for your company meet your exacting standards.
Benefits of Factory Assessment
- Helps to improve supplier performance and reliability
- Helps to ensure components used in your products are produced safely and responsibly
- Designed to verify ethical behavior at sites where components are sourced
- Helps to assure factory operations are above board, meeting relevant laws, regulations and standards
Benefits of Factory Assessments
Salary Equality Certification (Spain)
Every one of the participants in a public or private organization has the same rights in terms of responsibility, growth opportunities, development and remuneration. In recent years, a lot of work has been done to reduce the salary gender disparity to reduce the payment gap between men and women performing the same job, in the organization of which they are part. The Spanish legislation on Equality Plans has placed special emphasis on ensuring that all companies with 50 employees or more, implement a plan to avoid wage discrimination based on gender.
Currently, the Spanish “Reales Decretos” (RD) 901/2020 and 902/2020, give live to the Organic Law 3/2007, for the effective equality of women and men, providing guidance on how the law needs to be implemented. RD 902/2020, on equal pay for women and men, has also been promoted in Latin America, generating a lot of interest among companies that want to learn more about the implementation of equal pay in their current salary policies.
Benefits of Gender Equality Certification (Spain)
- Helps to display a commitment to organizational values
- Designed to increase gender equality in your workforce
- Helps to establish transparency and trust between your organization and its employees
Benefits of Gender Equality Certification (Spain)
ISO 9001 - Quality Management System
ISO 9001 provides criteria for setting up a quality management system that helps ensure consistent, good quality products and services. The process approach outlined in this standard has a strong customer focus and emphasizes continual improvement.
Benefits of ISO 9001 Certification
- Can help to reduce internal costs by increasing productivity and efficiency
- Helps to simplify the process of assessing and addressing organizational risks
- Helps to identify new opportunities
- Encourages the mindset of putting customers first, helping to improve customer satisfaction and making it easier to attract new customers
Benefits of ISO 9001 Certification
ISO 14001 - Environmental Management System
ISO 14001 sets out criteria and maps out a framework for setting up an effective environmental management system that helps you to reduce consumption and cut costs while increasing environmental stewardship. ABS QE certification to ISO 14001 can help your company be better prepared with a system in place to help you properly address an unplanned event and mitigate its consequences.
Benefits of ISO 14001 Certification
- Helps to save money through efficient resource use and waste reduction
- Can help to achieve strategic business aims by incorporating environmental issues in business management
- Can help reinforce and maintain company reputation
- Can help to improve stakeholder confidence
Benefits of ISO 14001 Certification
ISO 45001 - Occupational Health & Safety (OH&S) Management System
ISO 45001 provides a framework that helps reduce risk, prevent worker accidents, injuries and fatalities, enhances physical and mental health and wellbeing in the workplace, and enables proactive OH&S performance improvement.
Benefits of ISO 45001 Certification
- Helps to create a Health & Safety culture that can reduce the number of workplace incidents
- Helps to cut down on absenteeism and staff turnover
- Can improve morale and increase productivity
- Helps to lower insurance premiums
- Helps meet legal and regulatory requirements
- Helps to enhance company reputation
Benefits of ISO 45001 Certification
Integrated Management Systems
Some companies seek multiple cybersecurity certifications. Seamless integration is invaluable when your QMS manages activities for more than one standard. If you want to be sure activities are being managed effectively and efficiently, you might want to consider integration support. Our experts can help you ensure your QMS is meeting all the appropriate criteria for whichever standards you have chosen to be certified to.
Benefits of Integrating Management Systems
- Can help to increase the value of individual certifications
- Helps to better capture efficiencies
- Can reduce the overall cost of certification
- Helps to protect sensitive data
- Increases customer trust
- Supports maintaining compliance with regulations
- Protects company and brand reputation
- Helps to reduce the risk of successful cyber attacks
- Helps to reduce insurance premiums
Benefits of Integrated Management Systems
Ask an Expert
Anderson Jacintho , Director, Corporate Social Responsibility - North America
Do you have questions about how to implement CSR and ISO standards in your organization? Connect with Director, Corporate Social Responsibility, Anderson Jachintho, our CSR and Social Accountability expert, to start your certification journey today.
From the Knowledge Center
Read More
Business Assurance: What It Is and Why It Should Matter to Your Organization
There are numerous benefits obtained through ISO certification, but making sure you have the right Business Assurance partner is the first step to success. Read More
How Combining Certifications Can Help You Capitalize on Compliance
IATF Monitoring enables the Auditor and the Organization's Representative to cover basic monitoring of the QMS, to enable our clients to address identified risks, and keep the system on track while restarting daily operations without having an IATF auditor on site.Read More