DESIGN

Whatever the size and activity of the organisation, the purpose of assessment remains the same: to grade performance against a set of responsible business principles and to recognise and reward good corporations.

This section discusses how the assessment can be customised to meet the needs of larger organisations (see below), as well as tailored to meet the needs of small businesses and not-for-profit organisations.

Customised Assessment

While many clients choose to undergo the normal GoodCorporation assessment, many others have chosen to customise the coverage of the Standard by adding points that are either directly from the organisation’s own business principles or Code of Conduct, or from a particular industry-specific code.

A customised assessment can be used as a tool to assess the organisation as a whole or individual business units within the organisation. This methodology provides clients with a useful audit tool that enables them to determine how well their own business principles are being implemented across the organisation, and where improvements are necessary.

While many organisations choose assessment against the GoodCorporation Standard to manage responsibility on all fronts, others prefer a customised assessment, which suits specific business needs.

There are several options for tailoring an assessment:

• Extending the Standard. The client includes additional points relevant to its business or regulatory regime and continues to go for full GoodCorporation membership. The additional points from the client’s business principles or Code of Conduct are turned into assessable evidence points and assessed in the same way as points in The Standard. For example, one client has added a further 22 points covering issues in its own code of conduct and its sector where it is often asked for evidence of how its policies are implemented.

• Own code of conduct.  Large organisations typically have their own Code of Conduct and one of the challenges is to embed its practices into the operations of the company. In these cases, GoodCorporation designs an assessment that maps the Code of Conduct into specific business practices. It then measures how well these business practices are actually working on the ground. Depending on the range of the Code of Conduct the organisation may be able to include all of the GoodCorporation Standard within this assessment and still obtain GoodCorporation membership from a successful assessment.

• Due diligence. Where an organisation acquires a new business it often undertakes an appraisal of the new business’ operations. In such cases GoodCorporation can assess the new business against the GoodCorporation Standard and/or specific sets of practices of interest to the company.

• Partial assessment. The client wishes to undertake assessment on one or two stakeholder groups (such as employees or customers) but not the whole Standard. Or the client may wish to assess its operations against a set of practices that are specific to its needs and not related to the GoodCorporation Standard. In all cases GoodCorporation deploys the same assessment methodology and the same grades to help the organisation to measure its performance.

Small Businesses and not-for-profit organisations

In designing the assessment, GoodCorporation has tailored its assessment to serve the needs, size and budget of any company/organisation. The costs of assessment vary depending on the size and complexity of the organisation. The assessment and membership costs start at under £1,000 for small organisations in the UK. If you are located outside the UK, please contact us for cost information.

In 2007, after feedback from our clients, GoodCorporation launched a new tailored assessment for small businesses with fewer than 50 people.

• On-site time reduced: Small business assessment typically involves just one or two days on-site to interview managers, key employees, stakeholders and to review documents

• Web survey for stakeholder feedback: the small company assessment uses a web survey to obtain feedback rapidly in a cost-effective way

• Report: Uses a short presentation of results that focuses on key action points and feedback

• Charts: all of the web survey charts are provided so that the client can see how it is graded by its employees, customers, suppliers etc. These charts can also be used in the company’s own marketing.
  
  

• Tailored information: in addition to the GoodCorporation Standard, the small company assessment allows the organisation to add its own questions to the survey to get additional feedback, for example from its customers.

• Self-Assessment: allows strongly performing small companies (with fewer than five employees) to self-assess for up to two years, to reduce cost and administrative overload.