Social Compliance Audit Services

What is a Social Compliance Audit?

A social compliance audit is an on-site visit to a supplier’s facilities. The assessment helps you to verify whether they are in compliance with universally held norms and local laws related to social responsibility.

These audits play an important role in helping to ensure an ethical supply chain. They allow you to verify the working conditions in the factory and to see if they meet defined criteria in the following areas:

Child Labor
Forced and Compulsory Labor
Health and Safety
Freedom of Association and Right to Collective Bargaining
Discrimination
Disciplinary Practices
Working Hours
Remuneration
Management System

Social compliance audits are generally based on the SA8000 system, which measures social performance in areas that are important to your corporate social accountability. Audits can be conducted based on other frameworks and industry-specific guidelines as well.

Guidelines from organizations such as Sedex (SMETA audits), WRAP (for apparel), ICTI (for the toy industry) can be used. Regardless of the specific guidelines, a social audit helps you ensure that your corporate social responsibility targets are met and that compliance issues are avoided.

e with certain predetermined requirements.

While on-site at the factory, the auditor conducts a number of checks and provides a report to aid you in your supply chain decisions. For example, they might be working to determine whether the supplier:

Has an effective quality management system in place
Has the capability or capacity to meet your order requirements
Is operating in line with labor laws or environmental requirements.

At the end of the audit, you will receive the complete audit report. The report provides detailed information about the auditor’s findings, along with photographs. If there are any issues you should be aware of, you will be notified so that you can handle them appropriately.

Audits are designed to aid you in the sourcing process or to help you manage existing supplier relationships.

Why Should You Conduct a Social Compliance Audit?

If you want to ensure that the manufacturers you work with are ethical, these audits can help you verify that a supplier or potential supplier meets your requirements. We will help you to:

Avoid partnering with unethical suppliers
Ensure compliance with statutory requirements
Protect your brand’s reputation from harm
Get a clear look at your (potential) suppliers’ practices
Avoid problems related to child or forced labor

As your third-party auditing company, we will provide you with an audit report that gives you actionable information so you can make the right decisions regarding your supply chain.

5 Types of Factory Audits to Consider

We provide a wide range of quality assurance services to importers. Our audit services cover a number of different areas. We conduct the following types of audits:

Security (C-TPAT) Audit