The ISO 26000 Guidance Standard on Organisational Social Responsibility is about the reach the final draft stages. What’s it all about? Liza Lort-Philips explains.
The latest initiative to emerge from the stable of International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) products is the ISO 26000 Guidance Standard on Organisational Social Responsibility.
Before you roll your eyes and groan ‘oh no, not yet another corporate responsibility standard…’, read on, for as standards go, it deserves a fair hearing, at least. Most will be familiar with at least one other member of the ISO family – ISO14001, a certification standard now almost universally accepted as proof that an environmental management system is in place.
However, there the comparisons end. For ISO 26000, shortly to move into its final draft stages, sets out to be neither a management system, nor a certification standard. In the ISO’s own words, it is aiming for the ‘golden middle way’ (with regulation at one extreme and complete freedom at the other) that promotes responsibility based on existing standards, ‘without stifling creativity and development.’
In essence, ISO 26000, as the name suggests, is a ‘guidance standard’ aimed at providing practical guidance, and encouraging (voluntary) commitment on key aspects of social responsibility, namely: organisational governance, human rights, labour practices, the environment, fair operating practices, consumer issues, and community involvement and development.
Its long-term goal is to enable agreement on common approaches and methods of evaluating social responsibility. Its target audience is not just companies, but all organisations, including nongovernmental organisations and governments.
For anyone brave enough to dive deeper, there exist 79 pages of working draft that has been four years in the making. A significantly higher number of people have been involved in its development. As of March this year, there were 430 participating experts, 175 observers from 91 member countries, and a further 42 organisations with an international mandate.
In short, according to the Director of The Environment Foundation, Halina Ward, herself one such ‘participating expert’; ‘it is the closest thing the world has yet seen to a global negotiating process on social responsibility.’
Notwithstanding concerns from some countries on certain issues (notably the US, China, India) there is clearly momentum and credibility behind the
process. Two thirds of the voting body have indicated agreement to move forward, and formal publication is expected in September 2010.
But what will it all mean for CR practitioners? So many standards, so many expectations, so little time! The answer is it’s too early to tell. ISO cannot legislate, but its standards often provide a baseline for regulation at national level. On that basis, it cannot simply be ignored.
As it currently stands, the draft guidance standard is a vast and comprehensive A-Z of destinations to good places on everything from human rights through to community investment strategies. It even has a handy guide to sectoral initiatives in an appendix. But it’s a daunting read for even the keenest of practitioners. In short, it is written by experts for experts. If it has a chance of going mainstream it will surely need alongside it, a ‘dummies guide’ to make it more accessible – a Google map as well as the hefty A-Z. Simplifying such complex issues is hard, and in some cases, not the right thing to do.
It is not yet clear what ISO would view as ‘success’ in regard to take up of this new standard, but one indicator might be whether it is referred to as the single ‘go to’ source on the what’s and how to’s of social responsibility. As yet, it has a way to go.
Liza Lort-Phillips, Associate Director
MINI BIOG
Liza is Associate Director at Corporate Citizenship and works on a wide range of international client issues. A fluent Mandarin speaker, she lived and worked in China for many years, latterly as Director for APCO China. She was also Private Sector Advisor to Save the Children UK.
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