Sedex SMETA Audits

One of the most common reasons for businesses contacting vSure in recent years has been a Sedex SMETA audit, largerly prompted by Coles auditing its supply chain.

Whilst the SMETA (Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit) covers an array of compliance checks, Work Rights and Modern Slavery are two areas vSure has been able to help Coles suppliers.

What is a Sedex SMETA audit?

A SMETA is the world’s most widely used social audit, designed to evaluate a site’s supply chain practices regarding labour, health and safety, environment, and business ethics. It helps businesses assess risks, improve working conditions, and ensure ethical compliance.

The SMETA audit is designed to help protect workers from unsafe conditions, overwork, discrimination, low pay, and forced labour.

Who is Sedex?

Sedex is a global company that specialises in data, insights and professional services to empower supply chain sustainability. They offer tools and services to enable businesses like Coles Group to easily manage supplier sustainability risks and improve social, environmental and ethical performance to meet their supply chain goals.

What are your obligations under Sedex SMETA?

Proper processes around work rights to pass your Sedex SMETA are covered in this article. In summary:

  • You must validate the citizenship or visa of ALL staff (including contractors);
  • You must sight the proof of work rights documents and reasonably check that the documents belong to the person turning up for the job;
  • You must monitor the visas of all temporary visa holders;
  • If you employ student visa holders, you must properly verify student visa course start dates and term dates.

From a Modern Slavery perspective:

  • You must verify all staff’s age by sighting passport, birth certificate, driver license etc that proves their date of birth;

How could vSure help you pass your Sedex SMETA?

In the first instance, vSure is Australia and New Zealand’s leading, end-to-end work rights compliance platform. vSure provides the processes, automation and audit trail needed to meet your obligations under the Migration Act and the Sedex SMETA, without the stress and manual effort (no more VEVO checks!).

As a byproduct of work rights compliance, vSure also can help with verification of age, which is contained within SMETA (to ensure you are not using child labour). Documents required to prove citizenship or the passport required to conduct a visa check, are also the same documents required for proof of age (Passport, Birth Certificate, Photo ID etc).

Do you want to pass your Sedex SMETA audit without stress?

The vSure Work Rights app has been built to ensure employers are compliant with the obligations to take “reasonable steps at reasonable times” to check employee work rights.

Rather than having to manually check individuals, vSure has been built specifically for employers with more than a few foreign workers to check and automatically keep checking work rights.

If you want the easiest and most effective way to ensure work rights compliance, please click here to request a demonstration today.

Click here to arrange a demo or quote for vSure