Does anyone have any experience with a social audit?

David,

Can you clarify what type of social audit? I'm guessing you don't mean the Indian Government audit.

Cheers

Our company is considering a social audit (internal). I'm no expert, but I believe it to be a formal look at the company's impact on the environment, employees, customers, society and touches on things like transparency, energy and resource usage, worker pay/benefits/well-being, etc. The idea, which I have no experience to judge one way or another, is that it goes well beyond profits and pr, but in the end may improve both as by-products.

Sounds similar to what we call culture. Is the company culture healthy? We do an annual culture survey (which comes from Zappos.com story).

It asks questions about all areas of the business to every employee. We ask a simple question "What is the least favorite thing about your job?" And one year may different employee's said vacuuming the sales floor. Upon asking clarifying questions we learned each store used a cheap little sweaper that wasn't really a vacuum and didn't pick up heavy dirt very well. So we invested a little money an very little effort into getting every store an actual vacuum (I think they were $40 at Walmart) - they were the happiest we had ever seen!

Is this along the lines of what you are thinking?

Hi Christie... yes, I think it would be all of that plus things like:

- Is the company being ethically run?
- Is it's management being good financial stewards, ensuring the long term viability?
- What sorts of pressure does the company exert on the environment?
- Is the company behaving fairly to employees, customers, suppliers, management, investors, etc. ?
- How transparent and shared is company information with employees, the public, etc?

I believe the audit measures where we stand on a wide variety of issues and then that prompts discussion of how we can improve.

Having never gone through one, I can only imagine how this might go.

I would also add the topic of being "green" and the relative importance this is to the employees as well external constituencies where you have operations.