Audits and Assessments
Verité’s social and labor audits are globally recognized as best-in-class, particularly for their ability to provide deep insights to workplace conditions. We take a comprehensive and worker-centered approach to our examination of workplace and recruitment-related issues that triangulates information from workers, management, documents, and physical observation. In some cases, we include stakeholder interviews for context and insight to localized issues.
Our approach to audits and assessments start with a clear understanding of labor and human rights standards and the worker-related issues and risk environments of the different geographies and sectors that we work in. We ensure accuracy, integrity, and comprehensiveness in our data-gathering and analysis, and we take a problem-solving approach to post-audit engagements with clients and auditees.
Our engagement with workers is designed to provide a safe and confidential space for workers to talk about their working or recruitment experience without fear of retaliation.
Comprehensive Compliance Audit
Our Comprehensive Audit is our most commonly requested service. It includes an assessment of labor, health and safety, ethics and management systems standards, either using Verite’s own social compliance standards or a client’s Code of Conduct. We also offer follow-up audit services, either as full re-audits, visits focused on issue-specific consultation, or remediation check-up visits designed to assess a supplier’s progress in corrective action.
High Risk Investigations & Focused Issue Assessments
We provide a focused and in-depth evaluation of workplace situations that lead to high-risk issues such as forced labor, trafficking, child labor, contract labor, discrimination, and violation of the right to associate and collectively bargain, among others. This includes both onsite and offsite assessments and stakeholder interviews.
Foreign Worker Assessment
Our foreign/migrant worker assessments are designed to detect labor abuses specific to the employment of foreign and migrant workers through in-depth and detailed analysis of how these workers are recruited, deployed, and employed. Integral to these assessments is a due diligence review of labor agency practices and an analysis of recruitment-related fees and costs paid by workers that provide the basis for recommendations on repayment process and amounts.
Labor Agency Audits
Verite’s pioneering audits of recruitment agencies and labor providers determine their ethical recruitment performance against Verite’s Ethical Framework for Cross-Border Recruitment, The FAIR Hiring Initiative’s (TFHI’s) On The Level standards, and the RBA Supplemental Validated Audit Process (SVAP) for Forced Labor.
RBA Audits
RBA Audits are audits conducted in the electronics sector against the Responsible Business Alliance Code of Conduct. These assessment cover labor, ethics, management system, health and safety, and environment within the RBA’s validated audit process (VAP). The report is issued on the latest version of the RBA reporting tool in keeping with validated audit report (VAR) protocols.