SA 8000

Certification of Social Accountability Management Systems

An organisation wishing to request SA 8000 certification must: ensure that SA 8000 requirements are effectively understood and implemented at all levels of the organisation; provide all stakeholders with information on performance as regards certification requirements and keep appropriate and complete documentation; adopt and document a supplier involvement and awareness plan for SA 8000 issues.
Top management has the task of designing a corporate policy expressing its commitment to comply with the above requirements and relative legislation.
It must also promote a correct continual improvement policy as regards defining the rules of enhancing corporate goodwill.
This policy must be clearly expressed, truly implemented and made public. Top management must also commit to periodically reviewing its suitability and effectiveness and comparing performance with requirements in the sphere of continual improvement.
The standard gives stakeholders a dual role: they are an active part of the certification process as they can raise exceptions about presumed or ascertained breaches of the Standard and consequently their silence implies assent; they are also periodically informed about the company's SA 8000 performance.
Moreover, also during the validity of the Certificate, in the event of suspected or presumed breaches of the Standard, each stakeholder (e.g.: customers, employees, shareholders, trade unions, institutions, non-government associations, etc.) may contact the Certification Body with claims which may even lead to a supplementary audit of the company.
The claims and appeals mechanism reveals the added value provided by "Ethical Certification" in terms of reliability, involvement and transparency: it gives priority to the co-operative approach which the standard proposes to use in order to achieve its objectives.