Social Compliance Audits
HQTS provides a rational and cost effective solution to avoid social compliance issues with our Social Compliance Audit or ethical audit service. Employing a multi pronged approach using proven investigative techniques to gather and corroborate factory information, our native language auditors conduct comprehensive confidential staff interviews, records analysis and assess all factory operations based on globally recognized compliance benchmarks.
What is a Social Compliance Audit/Ethical Audit?
As companies expand their sourcing efforts in developing countries, it becomes increasingly important to scrutinize supplier workplace conditions. The conditions under which products are manufactured have become an element of quality and an important part of the business value proposition. Lacking a process for managing risks related to social compliance may have a direct impact on a company’s bottom line. This is especially true where image and brand are critical assets.
HQTS is a Social Compliance Audit Company with the capability and resources to support your efforts to develop an effective ethical audit program, as well as conduct audits of compliance-related processes and controls for you.
Types of Social Compliance Audits
There are two types of social compliance audits: official audits by government and unofficial audits by an independent thirty party. Unofficial but consistent audits can ensure your company maintains compliant.
Why is Ethical Audit Important?
Evidence of abusive or illegal treatment within your company or supply chain can damage your company’s brand. Likewise, showing concern for sustainability down the supply chain can raise your corporate reputation and polish your brand. Ethical audits also help the companies and brands to manage social compliance risks that could impact the company financially.
How to conduct a social compliance audit?
In order to ensure that your company meets standards of social compliance, it may be necessary to conduct a social compliance audit with the following steps:
1. Review your company’s code of conduct and its code of ethics.
2. Define your company’s “stakeholders” by identifying every individual or group that is affected by the performance or success of your business.
3. Identify the social needs that affect all of your company’s stakeholders, including clean streets, crime and vagrancy reduction.
4. Devise a system for identifying social targets, gathering data on addressing an issue and implementing strategies to positively affect the situation and reporting the results of those efforts.
5. Contract with an independent auditing firm that specializes in social responsibility programs; meet with representatives of the audit firm to discuss your efforts and your need for an independent review.
6. Allow the auditor to complete the independent verification process and then compare his results with the internal observations of the functional group leading your social responsibility effort.
The Social Compliance Audit Report
When a social compliance audit is finished by an ethical auditor, a report will be issued which documents the findings and includes pictures. With this report you obtain a clear picture of whether everything is in place for your company to all social compliance requirements.
Our Social Compliance Audit includes evaluations of your supplier’s compliance with:
- Higgs FEM Index
- Social & Labor Convergence Program (SLCP)
- Child labor laws
- Forced labor laws
- Discrimination laws
- Minimum wage laws
- Worker living standards
- Working hours
- Overtime wages
- Social benefits
- Safety and health
- Protection of the environment
