Social Compliance Audits

Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Compliance Audits have become more prevalent as major companies look at understanding and managing the risks within their supply chain.

A social compliance audit is conducted to evaluate, understand, measure and report upon the social and ethical performance of a business.

The audit is wholly a voluntary process however in most instances the audit has been sought from a key stakeholder within your supply chain.

In broad terms a social compliance audit covers the following key areas:

1. Forced and Bonded Labour
2. Freedom of Association for workers to join unions or worker committees
3. Occupational Health and Safety and safe working conditions for the workers
4. Child and Underage labour and how this is managed, if relevant
5. Wages paid to workers and ensuring they meet the required minimums
6. Working Hours and ensuring they are not excessive
7. Discrimination of workers
8. Subcontracting of work and or homeworking arrangements, and ensuring they meet the required standards
9. Harsh treatment of workers and whether they have a voice to lodge complaints and or grievances
10. Environmental matters and ensuring minimum standards are met

The most common social compliance audits conducted in Australia are:

• SEDEX
  • Based on SMETA methodology
• Fair Farms
• Social Workplace Accountability

Each have similarities however the audit content and report are quite different.

How can we help?

With the number of suppliers now being sought to undertake a social compliance audit we offer a variety of solutions.

From simple document (policies and procedures) preparation, to provisioning a full suite of compliance documents, and or completing a gap audit to ensure your site is audit ready; whichever option is used it can be scaled to suit your situation.

The risk businesses take by not undertaking any element of preparation for a social compliance audit is that depending on the audit and the severity of a non-compliance, a follow up audit may be mandated. This could potentially double the original cost of the audit and or increase costs afterwards with meeting the required compliance standards.