Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the voluntary integration of social and environmental considerations into a company's management strategy, including the pursuit of sustainable development.

The most widespread worldwide standard for CSR certification is SA8000, which regulates and verifies in particular the working conditions of employees.

Benefits of certification:

• improving the competitiveness of the company, especially in foreign markets,
• increased employee loyalty and labour productivity.

TÜV NORD Czech offers certification according to the SA 8000 standard through foreign auditors qualified by SAI organizations.

In addition to accredited third-party certification, TÜV NORD Czech also provides customer audits, either according to specific criteria or according to open schemes, which are usually based on SA8000 requirements. In the area of CSR, these two schemes in particular are:

• The BSCI (Business Social Compliance Initiative) is a set of rules summarized in a code of ethics developed and published by the International Foreign Trade Association (FTA). According to the BSCI principles, a registered member must work with at least two-thirds of the suppliers that are audited under the BSCI 2.0 scheme. Qualification for audits under this scheme is granted by the BSCI.
• SMETA - The SEDEX (a non-governmental information exchange organisation based in the UK with a regional office in Shanghai, China) member audit for ethical trading is a compilation of good CSR practice, but does not constitute a new code of ethics, methodology or certification process. It offers tools for systematic auditing in four areas:
  • OHS
  • Work standards
  • Environment
  • Business ethics