What Is a SMETA Audit?
A SMETA (Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit) is an international audit method used to assess ethical trade practices in global supply chains. The main reason why SMETA was developed is to enable suppliers to share valuable information about ethical practices and reduce the number of duplicate audits, to save time and money.
This article reports on the following topics:
2. Who can perform a SMETA audit
3. 9 steps to take when doing a SMETA audit
4. An app to do your SMETA audit digitally
The 4 Pillars of SMETA
A SMETA audit brings together good practices of a technical audit. The advantages of performing a SMETA audit is that it gives you the possibility to perform an audit and share it with third parties, such as suppliers or customers, instead of having to perform individual audits for each of them. There are four main elements of SMETA and they are divided into the following topics:
- Health and safety
- Labor standards
- Environment
- Commercial ethics
Who Can Perform a SMETA audit?
Initially, the idea of developing SMETA was only for the members of Sedex, but everyone has the possibility to make one. Encouraging more companies to do SMETA audits helps to increase transparency in audits and the way in which audit results are shared.
9 Steps to Take When Doing a SMETA Audit
When auditing a new client, it is necessary to do the following pre-, during- and post-audit steps:
Pre-audit
1. Discuss the auditing process with your client
2. Accept the Audit Upload Request the client has sent on SedEx Advance, revise Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ)
3. Look through previous audits and Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) on SedEx Advance
During-audit
4. Have a meeting with a supervisor
5. Site visit, private interviews and document analysis
6. Examination of Corrective Action Plan Report
Post-audit
7. Upload the Audit onto Sedex Advance and wait for the customer to review it
8. Verify Corrective Actions
9. Do a follow-up
A Mobile Solution for your Sedex Audit Checklist
Digitize your paperwork and record keeping, and automatically store all audit manager reports online for easy access anytime, anywhere. Get instant notification of security breaches through chat or push messages from your colleagues so your staff can prevent accidents. Improve workplace safety with Lumiform and add another layer of safety to your business:
Additional advantages of the digital application are:
- Generate real-time data via internal processes. This makes quality and security measurable and you can use the data to continuously optimize processes.
- Get an overview of everything that’s going on on-site.
- Continuous improvement of quality and safety: With the flexible checklist construction kit you can constantly optimize internal tests and processes. Since Lumiform guides the examiner through the exam, there is no need for training.
- Reports are created automatically – this saves the complete postprocessing.
- Increase the efficiency of your internal processes: Through more efficient communication within the team, with third parties and with management, as well as faster incident reporting, you solve incidents up to 4x faster than before.
- Using the super intuitive mobile application, you and your teammates can perform any check in the field with ease and save time.
- Save time by analyzing all data more easily and identifying areas that need your attention more quickly.
