7 replies to this topic

[FrozenFoodQA]

Hello!

 

For a US frozen (human) food meal manufacturer, which would be the best scheme to use for Walmart Social Audit? We are thinking about SA8000. If this is not the best scheme, which one would you recommend? 

 

Anyone has experience on this? 

 

How long did it take your plant from inquiry up to getting certified? 

 

Thank you. 

[G M]

The best one is the one that will be accepted/valued by the most customers.

 

We're in a different product segment, but have done SMETA 4P audits because that's what our customers (Costco and Walmart) wanted.  If another customer wanted us to do a ethical/sustainability audit, I'm confident they'd accept that one too.

 

I laughed at the timeline the people in the Walmart zoom call gave last week.  I would expect most companies to need 90+ days advance to get an audit scheduled.  When Walmart made the last request they were delusional enough to think we could get is scheduled in 4 weeks then too.

 

The audit itself takes about as long as all of our routine food safety audits added together (4-5 days for a facility with 1k people).  The largest chunk of time is spent in interviews with personnel.  The corrective action timeline and report are comparable to most food safety audits.

[ChristinaK]

We went with Intertek, as they were on a customer's approved list, and it was about 5 months from inquiry to audit (4-pillar SMETA). You aren't given a certificate, though--just a complete audit report and CAPR. I'm not sure if other social audits are moving away from certificates and scores, but I know SMETA has.

 

I was told that the CB had been inundated with SMETA audit requests, so they were booking out up to 6 months in advance this year around the time I began inquiring.

 

Like GM said, the number of workers--which includes any temporary/agency workers--will have the largest impact on the number of on-site audit days.

[FrozenFoodQA]

In this context, for a mid-size company (200-300 employees), is this audit spearheaded by HR, QA, EHS? There seems to be a bit of apprehension on who "owns" this audit. 

[G M]

In this context, for a mid-size company (200-300 employees), is this audit spearheaded by HR, QA, EHS? There seems to be a bit of apprehension on who "owns" this audit. 

 

The questions are 55% HR, 30% EHS, 15% administrative/managerial/purchasing, and 5% maintenance/engineering. 

 

0% food safety or quality.  But that doesn't stop our management team from asking me to keep coordinating it.  We could be making doorknobs and it would make no difference in the ethical trade audit.  Our department just has a lot more experience dealing with auditors and audits.

 

 

 

Attached Files

•  1. SMETA-Audit Process Guidance_Oct 2022.pdf   372.02KB   17 downloads
•  ETI Base Code (English).pdf   314.19KB   13 downloads

Edited by G M, 03 October 2024 - 12:55 PM.

[Jason Young]

I hear large companies are able to exempt themselves from the social audits.  Is there a process to exempt my company from doing a social audit?  

Is there a process to self police?

 

Jason

[Scampi]

have you read their program?

https://one.walmart....tPolicy_ENG.pdf

[TimG]

In this context, for a mid-size company (200-300 employees), is this audit spearheaded by HR, QA, EHS? There seems to be a bit of apprehension on who "owns" this audit. 

 

The VP of ops owns the one in our facility with assistance from HR>DirectorOfOps>Quality (me).

It's ironic, because we have one today! (last day of our 1 week window).

Looking at findings from previous audits it looks like it will be very heavy in employee interviews, safety, and work environment. The previous auditor quoted their findings directly from OSHA code, for the most part.