Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA) BSI

What is Sedex and SMETA?

Sedex is the name of the organisation – SMETA is the name of an audit methodology. 

The Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (Sedex) is a not-for-profit, membership organisation that leads work with buyers and suppliers to deliver improvements in responsible and ethical business practices in global supply chains. 

SMETA (Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit) is the audit procedure created by the Sedex membership which is a compilation of good practice in ethical audit technique. Using SMETA, a supplier can have one audit conducted and share it with multiple customers, rather than having a different audit conducted for each customer. The SMETA documents are designed to be used by experienced auditors in line with current established practices.
SMETA has been developed to provide guidance for both 2-Pillar and 4-Pillar audits, allowing individual supply chains to choose their requirements. The guidance can be adopted and tailored to carry out audits against a range of other labour codes based on the conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

A SMETA 2-Pillar audit comprises:

  • Labour Standards 
  • Health and Safety 
  • Additional Elements:
    • Universal Rights covering UNGP
    • Management Systems
    • Entitlement to Work
    • Subcontracting and Homeworking

 

A SMETA 4-Pillar audit contains in addition:

  • Environment (extended) – this replaces the Environment (shortened) section detailed above
  • Business Ethics

How SMETA benefits your organization

Our highly qualified auditors carry out on-site observations, conduct interviews with factory management and workers, inspect documents provided by the factory, and present their findings in a SMETA Audit Report. Based on the audit report, our experts can prepare a SMETA Corrective Action Plan Report (CAPR), outlining the improvements that the factory must make to achieve compliance and will help:

  • Reduce audit fatigue by providing one format for audits that is widely accepted
  • Motivate the workforce, while improving efficiency in the workplace
  • Enhance ethical trading programmes currently in place
  • Answer questions on ethical performance from non-government organizations and customers

Why choose us?

BSI (British Standards Institution) is the business standards company that equips businesses with the necessary solutions to turn standards of best practice into habits of excellence. Formed in 1901, BSI was the world’s first National Standards Body and a founding member of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Over a century later it continues to facilitate business improvement across the globe by helping its clients drive performance, manage risk and grow sustainably through the adoption of international management systems standards, many of which BSI originated. Renowned for its marks of excellence including the consumer recognized BSI Kitemark™, BSI’s influence spans multiple sectors including aerospace, automotive, built environment, food, healthcare and ICT. With over 80,000 clients in 172 countries, BSI is an organization whose standards inspire excellence across the globe.

Our clients choose us:

  • For our unique client management structure
  • For our expertise
  • For our integrity
  • Because we are performance minded
  • For our expert assessors