ISO26000: New standard, new discussions.
Your Corporate Social responsibility Partner
The ISO 26000 (Social responsibility) has been released on November 1st. Since, many discussions started on forums.
What is the ISO 26000? It is a standard on sustainability (referring to economical, social and environmental topics in a unified system). This standard is peculiar. First it intends to be “universal”. That means it intends to be used by every kind and size of organization (private, non for profit, big and small, in developed or developing countries). Yet, it is not a certifiable standard. We shouldn't see any ISO 26000 certified companies, nor organization proposing such certification. It is a guideline allowing each of us to benefit of a deeply thought approach on sustainable development. It has a strong educational role. It is then good to have so much discussions on forums. While writing this news, three main topics were argued.
The release method as an ISO standard with the whole process of ISO organization. It is mainly blamed for charging fees around 100 euro (it depends from one country to another). The standard intend to be universal and many point out such an amount goes against this goal. A small organization in a developing country can wonder on the opportunity of such investment which is close to one month legal minimum wage. Peoples remind that releases costs on Internet are virtually null and this knowledge should be given to humanity. Others remind the development costs of this standard (which have not being paid by ISO itself for most of them).
The second topic is about the potential impact of this standard. Some thinks it is too complex to be implemented by others than professionals (the text of about 100 pages in a very formal style is actually difficult to read). Others point out the great synthesis done, and this job is valuable in itself as it help Social responsibility to get more mature.
To increase this standard impact, some are claiming it should become certifiable. There are even some organization who have been proactive as show the picture of this article (picture gathered on Internet on November 15th, 2010). We remind this standard hasn't been designed to be certifiable and that has been reminded also by the ISO few days ago. Why does this request appear then? Why these fake certificate are already seen? It seems to me it comes paradoxically from a lack of understanding of this standard and a lack of actual willingness to implement it.
The standard stress on the importance of global approaches, as the global impact analysis, the discussions with stakeholders. They are open questions, and they can't be easily and properly audited during a reasonable audit length. Other standards, even much more simple, lack an adaptation to local situation. The standards certifying working conditions in factories are a good example. The local situations are much more various than allowed by a worldwide certification approach (but by having several certification level which is not the case currently). The ISO26000 certification wouldn't be realistic on a global point of view. But it is the scope of the standard.
A certification would be comfortable. It would allow one company to say: “This supplier is certified, I don't have to worry about this one”. But the very core of the ISO26000 is to take stakeholders into account (including customers and suppliers) to assess the impacts of our practices. If one doesn't take capacity of a supplier into account, it could lead to excessive overtime. If one doesn't take the actual use of a product into account, it could lead to heavy pollution, even if the good is supposed to be recyclable. Seeking a easy management through certification, is actually opposed to this standard promoting taking all stakeholders into account.
We should be suspicious of those certificates which reassure us, but which are not matching actual situation. Plenty of them have been released these last years where economical uncertainty and worry are at most, but do they really protect us? Have they another usefulness than ease us?
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Release date: 2011-02-16
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