Carrying out an ISO 26000 diagnostic

As one crisis follows another (financial, economic, social, ecological), companies' vision of their medium- and long-term development becomes less and less clear. At the same time, today's means of communication have made available, in ever shorter timeframes and to an ever wider public, any information that could potentially impact a company's image.

Developing the right product or service is no longer enough. To last, a company must anticipate tomorrow's challenges, while ensuring that it has taken into account all the current risks associated with its activity. The ISO 26000 standard on corporate social responsibility is a good starting point for this kind of approach. In fact, as a standard, it offers a completely new approach: the transversal nature of its scope of action within the company leads to in-depth changes in development strategy, not only in terms of economic aspects, but also social and environmental ones.

Where quality, safety or environmental standards provide a principle of continuous improvement for company operations in their respective fields, the ISO 26000 standard proposes broad guidelines based on central issues such as working conditions and respect for human rights, environmental protection, consideration of stakeholders (consumers, local communities), business practices and organizational governance.

The main difficulty encountered by companies when implementing a corporate social responsibility approach is the lack of precise guidelines in the ISO 26000 standard. As this standard was designed to be applied at an international level, it only sets out the broad guidelines to be implemented. Each company is then free to define the means to be implemented according to the context of their activity, as long as they are in line with the philosophy of the standard. Carrying out an ISO 26000 diagnosis of your business is an important step in this respect, enabling you to assess your current performance in terms of actions already taken, and to map out the road ahead in line with your company's values, objectives and regulatory context.