ISEAL Alliance

By Paddy Doherty, ISEAL Code Development Manager

We’re all in the risk management game. Standard setting organisations are designed to manage social and environmental risks of the market economy. For example, in global manufacturing labour standards are designed to manage the risk of workers’ well-being being overridden in the interests of profit.

It is therefore unsurprising that ISEAL members include elements of risk management in their assurance systems. Assurance is itself a risk management exercise, designed to manage risk at both the scheme level (the risk that enrolled enterprises will not comply with the standards) and the enterprise level (risks associated with standards compliant activities).

Since risk is such an important aspect of assurance, it’s essential that the ISEAL Assurance Code addresses this, and gets it right. For instance, many standards require users to perform risk assessments but some do not describe how it should be done and descriptions can vary greatly from one standard system to another. Thus there is an opportunity for the assurance code to require scheme-owners to define what they mean by a “risk assessment”. Similarily, with risk-based sampling; some standards schemes arrange the enterprises enrolled in the programme according to their risk levels with enterprises deemed “high-risk”, receiving more scrutiny than those seen to be low-risk. This practice makes sense from a resource perspective but what happens if 2% of samples have major non-compliances? The Assurance Code provides an opportunity to address these challenges and offer guidance on developing a consistent practice for risk assessments.

Alongside managing risk, the assurance code also set out to facilitate a shared understanding of the practices that are most likely to address issues concerning standard quality, accessibility, auditor competence and transparency; all of which remain significant challenges in social and environmental standards systems.

The first draft of the Assurance Code contains a lot of good ideas but we want the code to provide real value in improving the effectiveness of certification and accreditation to deliver social and environmental impact and in order to achieve this, we need your input. To get involved, you can read the draft Assurance Code, complete a survey or find out more here.

We look forward to receiving your comments!

IMAGE: Volkopi Coffee community outreach specialist. Copyright Noah Jackson, 2011, Rainforest Alliance