SA 8000 addresses the requirements of Social Accountability, by implementing this standard organization can improve its overall social management system to assure the confidence & satisfaction of their customers and other stakeholders. SA 8000 is the world’s leading social certification program. Major difference among SA 8000 and other social standards / code of conducts is that it is now used to provide companies with a system to integrate social accountability into all of their policies and practices additionally it provides the certificate valid for three years.

The SA 8000 Standard is based on globally recognized standard of decent work including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ILO conventions and national laws. SA 8000 follows a management system approach to social performance and emphasize the continual improvement that helps to the organization to meet the requirements of its customers, risk and stakeholders related to its work.

SA 8000 is the voluntary certification program and is suitable for any organization i.e. large, medium and small considering improvement in its ethical practices and sustainability to meet the expectations of all stakeholders. SA 8000 audit is performed against the requirements of SA 8000 standard that assures safe, legal, and ethical & secure manufacturing process. SA 8000 standard is developed by SAI in 1997 as the first credible standard for social certification.

If any suppliers’ organization is certified on SA 8000, that certificate and audit report can be shared with multiple customers rather than having different audit conducted for each customer. SA 8000 certification is the pre-request to start business relationship with customers and retail stores. Mostly International customers wave their own social audit of factory on behalf of SA 8000 certificate and they evaluate the audit results according to their criteria and give the rating to the factory such as Wal Mart the giant retailer of the world also accepts SA 8000 certificate along with the audit report and evaluate against their own social audit criteria and give the rating to the supplier. SA 8000 ultimate objective is to improve working conditions through out the supply chain. SA 8000 is the mother standard of social accountability and mostly social code of conducts driven by this standard.

SA 8000 doesn’t conduct audit itself and only approved certification bodies can conduct the SA 8000 audit as well as those companies must have the full member of APSCA. Mostly retailers, importers and customers don’t accept the SA 8000 audit report if monitoring firm and their auditor do not have the membership number of APSCA.