Social Accountability 8000 Program
Social Accountability 8000 Standard was established as a universal standard that could be used across product lines and sectors as a definitive benchmark for social accountability.
It provides transparent, measurable, verifiable standards for certifying the performance of companies in nine essential areas:
- Child Labor
- Forced Labor
- Health and Safety
- Freedom of Association and Right to Collective Bargaining
- Discrimination
- Disciplinary Practices
- Working Hours
- Remuneration
- Management Systems
The Social Accountability 8000 Standard is now used to provide companies with a system to integrate social accountability into all of their policies and practices. Additionally, it provides a basis for objective third party certification of a company’s production facilities.
With years of experience in social accountability, Intertek has created monitoring services based on an in-depth understanding of local labor issues, workplace safety, and environmental laws and regulations. The audit team will visit the client organization´s facilities and assess the implementation and effectiveness of the Social Accountability Program to confirm the facility´s compliance with SA 8000. Intertek auditors maintain local presence monitoring in more than 100 countries worldwide for most major retail brand companies.
Benefits of SA 8000 Certification
Any organization can benefit from proving they are socially responsible in their business practices. Benefits of implementing and registering to SA 8000 include:
- As a socially responsible company, it earns public confidence and enhances corporate image and reputation, which is one of the key marketing advantages.
- The number of customers’ audits can be much reduced. Costs, time and management effort for those duplicated monitoring programs of customers can be eliminated.
- With a clear commitment to ethical working standards, more well trained staff can be attracted and worker commitment and productivity can be increased.