The guide to EcoVadis certification: frequently asked questions

Created in 2007, EcoVadis provides a collaborative web-based rating platform assessing the non-financial global performance of organizations, working towards increased insight into the sustainability performance of their suppliers.

The non-financial assessment by EcoVadis measures the sustainability management system of a company through 21 sustainability criteria focused on four key performance areas:

The methodology is based on international sustainability standards such as the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact, the International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s standards, the ISO 26000 standard, the CERES Roadmap, and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, also known as the Ruggie Framework.

The methodology also integrates sustainability regulations from +160 countries.

The evaluation is driven according to 7 EcoVadis founding principles:

For EcoVadis, an effective sustainability management system relays on three management layers Policies, Actions and Reporting On Results, separated into seven management indicators: Policies (POLI), Endorsements (ENDO), Measures (MESU), Certifications (CERT), Coverage – Deployment of Actions (COVE), Reporting (REPO) and 360° Watch Findings (360).

The EcoVadis rating is available to all companies and suppliers, excepting the companies operating in Manufacture of tobacco products (ISIC code 1200), Mining of coal and lignite (ISIC division 05), Manufacture of weapons and ammunition (ISIC code 2520), Manufacture of air and spacecraft and related machinery (ISIC code 3030).

The EcoVadis company users can be:

In total, EcoVadis covers more than 200 purchasing categories.

The EcoVadis assessment scopes allow participation at various organizational levels, from group levels (headquarters, holding, or parent company) to subsidiary levels (business unit, country-specific entity, manufacturing site, or regional operating company).

On a group level, the documentation provided has to cover all the underlying entities to avoid the risk of a lower score. For instance, in the case of a company ISO certified for an entity in a country, but not in other countries, it may be more beneficial to conduct the assessment on a subsidiary level in a country where the company is ISO certified.

Conversely, large companies with an overarching management approach or requested to complete the survey on multiple entities can process the assessment at the group level, as long as they can provide supporting documentation at this group level as well.

The use of technology is a key part of EcoVadis assessment: the collaborative, integrated web-based platform helps monitor the sustainability performance of suppliers with reports and dynamic quantitative metrics.

For each of the four sustainability themes (Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics, Sustainable Procurement), the easy-to-use scorecards give a clear, dynamic view on a company’s performance: insufficient, beginner, intermediate, advanced, and leader. This information helps to implement prioritized actions to focus on for improvement.
Since 2021, a dedicated and independent scorecard for Carbon has been added.

More qualitatively, strengths & improvement areas provide more details and insights into a company’s score, as in the figure below.

Improvement areas are automatically added to the company’s Corrective Action Plan, pre-organized by priority.

The Corrective Action Plan (CAP) is a tool shared between the evaluated company and its client, in order to improve the CSR performance.

It is strongly recommended when the supplier’s score is below 47, choosing the 5-10 most important actions that are automatically proposed by the tool.

Uploading new documents does not impact the current scorecard, but will be considered for the next re-evaluation.

Unlike other ESG rating agencies, the EcoVadis assessment is built on thorough documentation analysis by a global team of sustainability experts from 50+ nationalities who will verify whether the company answers are supported by the proper documents and respect criteria.

EcoVadis scorecards are valid for 12 months after publication.

Once the 12 months have passed, the company will still be able to access its scorecard (and the ones of suppliers) but will no longer be able to share the results publicly.

Companies subscribe to an annual fee ranging from €350 to €6,500, depending on the company size.

This subscription covers the EcoVadis assessment, access to the EcoVadis platform and resources, and the ability to share the company’s performance.

The EcoVadis assessment process takes place in 4 phases.

The client is asked to create a company profile specifying the business activity and the contact information.

Once the registration is complete, a link and instructions (e.g. deadline to complete the questionnaire) are sent to create the account and access the platform.

The EcoVadis assessment can be conducted in 8 languages: English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Chinese.

Documents can be submitted in all languages but it is preferable to upload documents in one of these languages, especially English.

According to the company sector, size and country, a tailored questionnaire is built by EcoVadis, and the procurement executives can request their suppliers to undergo the assessment throughout the platform.

From the dashboard, the control panel displays which criteria are activated for the company evaluation and their level of importance: not activated, activated with medium importance, activated with high importance, or activated only in risk countries.

After filling out the questionnaire, EcoVadis ESG experts will assess the answers and the supporting documentation.

The process takes approximately 6 to 8 weeks, depending on the complexity of the information provided by the company and the number of documents submitted.

For this step, EcoVadis Analyst not only reviews answers and documents provided by the company but also external resources (media, NGOs, etc.).

Once the answers are analyzed and results published, the platform notifies the company via email.

An overall final score out of 100 is given to the company.

It is a weighted average score, function of the size, industry and location of the company, on the four themes (Environment, Ethics, Labor & Human Rights, Sustainable Procurement).

This overall score reflects the quality of the company’s and its supplier network’s sustainability strategy, actions, and performances at the time of assessment.

The three management layers are given the following weights: policies account for 25% of the scoring, actions for 40% and results for 35%.

The company scorecards can be easily shared with employees or customers and compared against peers in the industry, thanks to EcoVadis’ benchmark (see example below).

Once the results are calculated, the company might receive an EcoVadis medal based upon the percentile rank of its score.

This percentile rank is calculated across all assessed companies in all industries, not per industry.

In January 2022, the reviewed criteria are as follows:

The medal shows the year in which the assessment was completed and can be used as external recognition on the company’s website and on communication to investors, trading partners, and customers.

The detailed rating methodology is available on EcoVadis’ website.

The better prepared a company is, the easier it will be to complete the assessment process.

Each of the four themes covered is generally assigned to a specific department: Environment to the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) manager, Labor & Human Rights to Human Resources (HR) manager, Sustainable Procurement to the Procurement team, and Ethics section to the IT or Legal departments.

One person within the company should be appointed as being responsible for the overarching questionnaire, for collecting relevant documents and making sure they answer EcoVadis’ requirements.

The EcoVadis website provides some general guidelines and dedidated webinars to help companies understand its requirements.

For premium customers, the eLearning platform EcoVadis Academy offers introductory and advanced online courses in five languages (English, French, German, Spanish, and Chinese) aligned with the EcoVadis rating methodology.

The EcoVadis Academy enables administrators to track individual progress, monitor, and assign coursework to drive supplier sustainability improvement programs identified within a company’s scorecard.

The reassessment process may be initiated when the scorecard has expired or when the minimum score requested by a partner has not been reached.

Before starting reassessment, it is recommended that 1- the company reviews guidance provided within its previous scorecard, and 2- establishes a progress report, based on the corrective actions implemented following previous assessment.

Supporting documentation requested by EcoVadis are crucial elements of the assessment.

Hereafter is a check-list to effectively prepare for the process:

EcoVadis allows a maximum of 55 new document uploads for one assessment.

Getting through EcoVadis assessment is complex and time-consuming. Most companies lack the expertise to complete it on their own and are prone to mistakes that could complicate matters further. But we can make everything smoother!

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