Reporting and Assurance Related Services

AccountAbility works with organisations to improve the quality and usefulness of their social and sustainability reporting . The assurance-related services package helps organisations:

• Build robust assurance processes through the practical application of the AA1000 Assurance Standard, the world’s first comprehensive assurance standard for use with social and sustainability reports.
• Enhance the success of assurance in terms of outcomes and performance, as well as technical quality– by increasing an organisations understanding of how to prioritise stakeholder audiences or issues, and close credibility gaps.
• Get the best out of assurance providers and advisors offering assurance, audit, verification and review services for social and sustainability reporting.

The Assurance-related Services provides a clear framework, built on the AA1000 Assurance Standard, for assessing the needs of reporting organisations and for selecting assurance providers. It gives support throughout the full cycle of assurance through:

1. Assurance Diagnostic and ‘Roadmap’. Assessing your assurance needs in the context for your business goals.
2. Provider Review and Tender Specification. Identifying appropriate service providers. Providing customised tender documents for your use.
3. Tender Evaluation. Evaluating tenders using a quantitative scoring framework.
4. Assurance Evaluation. Evaluating the quality and usefulness of an assurance process once it is completed.
5. Client Development. Development of the relevant skills within your organisation to help you get the most out of consultants’ assurance services.

Client Examples

• BAT
  AccountAbility is working with BAT to develop a self-assessment tool to enable them to coherently and consistently interpret and apply the principles and process of the AA1000 Assurance Standard across each of its more than 180 end markets.
• Nike
  Following an earlier engagement to help the Nike team build an ‘assurance roadmap’, AccountAbility is advising on and participating in a Stakeholder Panel. The Role of the Panel is to determine the material aspects of Nike’s corporate responsibility activities to core business, but also provide assurance for its related sustainability report.
• Nissan
  AccountAbility worked with Nissan to explore how best to interpret and use the AA1000 Principles of Materiality, Completeness and Responsiveness in the context of the Japanese car industry.
• The Body Shop International
  Based on the AA1000 Assurance Standard, AccountAbility is supporting the Body Shop in a project aiming to help develop thinking, strategy and competencies in the new area of assurance of sustainability reporting. AccountAbility undertook the assignment as part of support services available to organisational members such as The Body Shop International.