1) child labor: enterprises must control the minimum age, underage workers, study at school, working hours and safe working scope according to law.

2) Compulsory employment: The enterprise shall not engage in or support the use of compulsory labor, and shall not use bait or ask for mortgage payment in employment. Enterprises must allow employees to leave after shifts and allow employees to resign.

3) Health and safety: The enterprise must provide a safe and healthy working environment, prevent possible accidents and injuries, conduct health and safety education, and provide sanitary cleaning equipment and standing drinking water.

4) Freedom of association and right to collective bargaining: The enterprise respects the right of all employees to form and join selected trade unions and conduct collective bargaining.

5) Differential treatment: Enterprises shall not discriminate on the grounds of race, social status, nationality, disability, gender, procreation tendency, membership or political affiliation.

6) Punishment measures: Material punishment, mental and physical repression and verbal abuse are not allowed.

7) Working hours: Enterprises must abide by relevant laws and regulations, overtime must be voluntary, and employees have at least one holiday every week.

8) Remuneration: The salary must reach the minimum limit stipulated by laws and industries, and there is no income except meeting the basic requirements. The employing unit shall not evade labor laws and regulations with false training programs.

9) Management system: Enterprises should formulate an open policy and promise to abide by relevant laws and other regulations; Ensure management summary and review, select enterprise representatives to supervise the implementation of plans and controls, select suppliers that meet the requirements of SA8000, determine the way to express opinions and take corrective measures, openly contact inspectors, provide applicable inspection methods, and generate supporting documents and records.

4 how to carry out SA8000 audit

As a criterion for third-party audit and certification, SA8000 can be used to evaluate the compliance of an organization, so as to confirm that the organization meets the standard requirements. Similarly, the second party audit can be carried out according to SA8000 to audit the supply chain of the company's suppliers.

Social responsibility auditing methods are different in different regions. In addition to the traditional on-site evidence review, it is also necessary to investigate the opinions of employees, managers and community representatives where the organization is located. Auditors should talk to the auditee and weigh the subjective statements and facts. The objective evidence of audit is based on subjective statement and fact investigation.

Some situations encountered by auditors at the scene reflect the characteristics of social responsibility in auditing. For example, in some factories, young people often replace their biological sisters or brothers, thus violating the relevant provisions of the legal working age.

The signing of the service industry should be comprehensively reviewed, and the factual statements and evidence should be compared with the signed contracts to ensure that there is no coercion or oppression of workers. For example, the factory requires workers to live in the factory, but the accommodation conditions are bad, isolated from their families, and the activity space is extremely crowded, which needs to be strengthened.

Five challenges faced by auditors

Auditors must be very rigorous and make extraordinary efforts to ensure that reliable and effective information can be obtained instead of distorted personal statements. Social responsibility audit should check and evaluate the evidence according to local norms and standards to ensure that the final audit evaluation is correct and effective. For example, in the Far East, the acceptable accommodation standard is that a room can accommodate 6 to 8 beds, and the bed is made of a wooden board on a metal frame as a sleeping berth. Its toilet facilities must meet the basic requirements of concealment, isolation and cleanliness, which are basically the same as those in developed countries, but the standards of other conditions and requirements in this area are far from those in London and new york.

6 SA8000 certification process

Like ISO9000 quality system, ISO 14000 environmental system and OHASl8000 safety system certification, the certification process of SA8000 social responsibility management system roughly includes the following steps:

1. Company submits application. When the enterprise completes the preparatory work and basically meets the certification requirements, it can submit an application to the certification body, or it can submit an application in advance to make preparations under the guidance of the certification body.

2. Review and acceptance. The certification body examines the application submitted by the company and whether its contents meet the basic requirements of certification. Those who meet the requirements will be admitted, and those who do not meet the requirements will be notified to the company not to accept.

3. First visit. The social responsibility management system attaches great importance to field performance, so it is necessary to visit the auditee before the audit. The purpose of the first visit is to determine the audit scope, understand the company's current situation, collect relevant information and determine the audit workload.

4. Sign the contract. The certification body and the entrusting party may sign a contract on the audit scope, audit criteria, audit report content, audit time and audit workload, determine the formal cooperation relationship, and pay the application fee.

5. Submit documents. After signing the contract, the auditee shall provide the certification body with the social responsibility management manual, procedure documents and relevant background materials for the certification body to pre-examine the documents.

6. Establish an audit team. After signing the contract, the certification body shall appoint an audit team leader to form an audit team and start the preparatory work.

7. Pre-examination of documents. The audit team leader shall organize the audit team members to pre-examine the documents. If there are major problems in the social responsibility management document, the auditee or the entrusting party shall be informed, and the auditee shall modify and resubmit the document. If there are no major problems with the document, a formal review will begin.

8. Review preparation. The audit team leader shall organize the audit team members to formulate the audit plan, determine the audit scope and progress, and prepare the on-site audit checklist.

9. Pre-trial. When the entrusting party considers it necessary, it may require the certification body to conduct pre-examination before the formal certification audit, so as to take corrective measures in time and ensure that the formal audit is passed at one time.

10, certification review. According to the audit plan, the certification institution conducts certification audit on the auditee.

1 1. Submit the audit report and conclusions. According to the audit results, there may be three conclusions, namely, suggested registration, suspended registration and suspended registration.

12, approved by the technical committee. For the company recommended for registration by the audit team, the technical committee of the certification body shall examine whether to approve the registration, and if not, re-examine.

13, approved for registration. Certification bodies approve the company registration that has passed the examination and approval.

14, issue a certificate. Certification bodies issue SA8000 certification certificates to companies approved for registration.

15. Announcement of Certification Company. The certification body will record the certification company with the Supreme Audit Institution, and the Supreme Audit Institution will publish it on its website.

16, supervision and audit. The certification body shall supervise and audit the certified enterprises once every six months, and the certification certificate shall be valid for three years, after which it shall be re-evaluated.

7 correctly understand SA8000

Moral propagandists have a heated discussion on the formulation of social responsibility standard SA8000. They believe that the introduction of this standard is the embodiment of managerialism. Some non-governmental organizations (such as NGOs) reiterated this argument, arguing that the formulation of SA8000 catered to the focus of organizations and society. On the other hand, traditional auditors think that the standard deviates from the core problems of society, but it is actually only put forward for the superficial phenomena of society. In fact, these two diametrically opposite views are biased, and these enthusiasts have not correctly understood and grasped the true connotation and formulation purpose of SA8000. The correct understanding is that managers should apply SA8000 to the management system of an organization as a comprehensive tool of moral management practice.

The development prospect of 8 SA8000

The formulation of moral responsibility standard has become the core of British government's moral trade activities in the new period. The new era of moral trade was initiated by Claire Short, British Secretary of State for International Development, on 1997. In modern business circles, consumers often consider the ethical behavior of organizations when buying goods, so it is very important for companies to declare and show their ethical behavior in the course of business. Nowadays, the establishment of a new organization must include moral evaluation and environmental impact analysis in most of its planning proposals.

With the continuous revision and improvement of SA8000, the standard will eventually develop into a standard covering a wide range of ethics, society and environment. At present, SA8000 only involves personal rights and initial audit related to core elements such as health, safety and equal opportunity. CEPAA is the accreditation body of SA8000 certification organization and the copyright owner of social responsibility standards.

Although SA8000 has not been transformed into ISO international standard, it has been recognized internationally. More importantly, the standard is attracting wide attention and enthusiasm from the global organization community. Obviously, the social responsibility certification issued by the institution after comprehensive and independent audit by the certification institution will be the most effective recognition of the ethical behavior and social responsibility management ability of the visiting institution. SA8000 will be an important part of the organization's success in the future international competition.

SA8000 will be very popular in the future, because enterprises want to show their willingness to improve the working environment and working conditions. This standard system is praised almost all over the world because it stipulates some problems that other systems avoid.

SA8000 and the third independent certification process matching these standards mean that consumer organizations no longer need to formulate their own supplier requirements and conduct basic supervision and review of suppliers. These benefits can save a lot of costs, far exceeding the cost of certification itself.

Now many enterprises hold a wait-and-see attitude towards SA8000. Many people think that SA8000 is correct, and it can basically control costs effectively, which is much better than individual enterprises. Among them, Asian countries are particularly interested, especially China.

Kaufman of CEPAA hopes that SA8000 will eventually be as widely accepted as ISO9000 quality system and ISO 14000 environmental standard. She said that SA8000 has the potential to be widely used. End users are consumers all over the world; Everyone can understand these principles. In due course, they will be more widely understood and applied, because wholesalers tend to choose to buy goods from ethical factories to retain their retail customers. This is another quality awareness and selling point they provide, indicating that certification is only granted to enterprises with excellent working standards.

9 comments

SA8000 is an important standard for introducing social value into organizational practice, and social value is the soul of organizational reputation today;

SA8000 provides the company with social responsibility norms, but the more important work is to conduct consistency audit; Only after the company has incorporated SA8000 into its daily management norms and disclosed the results of behavioral performance measurement to relevant parties can it be confirmed that the company is implementing this standard;

SA8000 has undoubtedly played a role in protecting the rights and interests of relevant parties and assisting management, and related issues will be included in the agenda of global organization management.