Taking a little bit of time to prepare to complete the questionnaire will make the process go much faster.
Prepare your team – first-time responders
When your organization participates for the first time, you have but little insight into the exact content of the questionnaire, unfortunately. but good preparation is definitely possible.. The EcoVadis questionnaire is divided into four categories: Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement. As responsibilities for these topics are generally assigned to different parts of the organization, make sure that the person responsible for the overarching theme is briefed. Walkthrough the criteria and check which criteria are actively managed within the organization. Per criteria, collect credible documentation that proves the topic is part of the company’s entire CSR management cycle e.g. policies, prove of endorsement of external initiatives, procedures, activities, certificates, site audits, training materials, CSR report, and relevant KPIs
Prepare your team – reassessment
You have received your EcoVadis scorecard and you may be either happy or unhappy with the results. Either way, it makes sense to perform a quick gap analysis to identify the most important points of improvement. Prioritization of actions is key to keep things manageable and a roadmap can be of great help to working on structural improvement. Requesting organizations use the EcoVadis tool to gain insight in, and manage the CSR performance of, their supply chain. Increasingly, requesting organizations require their suppliers to reach a certain EcoVadis score or to show continuous improvement. Receiving your EcoVadis scorecard is thus not merely a result but also a beginning.
Check your documents
The reliability of the documents provided is a crucial element of the assessment. EcoVadis has developed some general guidelines on which documents should adhere. Below you find a helpful checklist:
- All documents must contain the company name, logo, date or implementation, and/or review date. In addition, documents in all languages are accepted, though it should be possible to copy text from the document. The authenticity of the document is key. Documents created solely for satisfying the EcoVadis questionnaire will not be accepted.
- Policy documents should contain qualitative and/or quantitative objectives and pre-exist for an adequate period of time (i.e. more than 3 months prior to uploading the document in the EcoVadis tool). The validity period for a policy is eight years.
- Documents supporting actions should describe their function and how they contribute to the mitigation of relevant risks. The validity period of a document describing actions is eight years. In addition, insight into the coverage of the actions, certificates, and third-party audits in relation to the EcoVadis assessment scope is important.
- Results: the validity of a reported KPI is 2 years.
EcoVadis allows a maximum of 55 new document uploads for one assessment. This should be more than enough. Though if for example certificates and/or audit-reports take a large chunk of this capacity, these can be merged in one large pdf with a clear table of contents. However, this should be avoided if possible.