关于RBA的VAP认证内容更多查询More About the VAP
More About the VAP
Assessments carried out on RBA member facilities and their suppliers' facilities are completed by independent, third-party firms specially trained in social and environmental assessment and the VAP protocol.
A typical VAP onsite assessment at a single manufacturing facility may last 2-5 days and includes a thorough document review, interviews with management and employees and a visual site survey. RBA-approved firms use local, native-speaking assessors where possible, and they are specially trained to spot hard-to-find VAP protocol violations like instances of forced labor. They are also specialists in understanding where some violations are more common, such as excessive working hours in areas with high migrant worker populations.
Where VAP assessments uncover non-compliances to the protocol, those findings are rated by severity as “minor,” “major” or “priority.” All three categories of findings have specified periods of time during which the facility in question must remedy the findings and implement systems to prevent reoccurrences. Remedy and prevention measures are part of corrective action plans (CAPs).
A key initial impetus for the founding of the RBA, and one of its continued benefits to its members today, is the practice of sharing assessments. Many RBA members share common suppliers, and those suppliers also share suppliers. Whenever a single RBA member assesses its own or a supplier’s facility, the member can share the report with other customers of that facility that are also RBA members. Sharing assessments save RBA members and their suppliers millions of dollars each year, which not only creates business efficiency but also ensures that cost is less of a barrier for companies seeking to ensure that their facilities and those of their suppliers are living up to the RBA Code of Conduct and protecting workers and their communities.
In 2018, the RBA began a new project to increase sharing of assessments, known as the Assessment Cooperation Program.
To initiate a VAP assessment, or for additional information on the program, contact the RBA VAP Team at VAP@responsiblebusiness.org
View the current RBA VAP Standard in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. Translations are provided as additional resources to increase accessibility, however, please note that the official document for standard interpretation and reference is the English version. In case of any translation discrepancies, the English version takes precedent.
The RBA Auditor Guidebook details the standards, conduct, and qualification requirements that independent third-party audit firms and auditors are expected to maintain, in order to meet the standards set for the RBA VAP suite of programs.
RBA members can find additional information on the VAP, including interpretation guidance, corrective action management, definitions and other resources, in the Member Portal or by contacting the VAP team.
RBA Asessment Cooperation Program
The Assessment Cooperation Program (ACP) allows RBA members to nominate their suppliers for a VAP assessment. Suppliers nominated by members will be approached by RBA staff to conduct a VAP. The results of the assessment will be shared with all of the members that nominated the supplier and were approved by the supplier.
A unique differentiator of the ACP is the custom-question feature of the program. Members can add custom questions to the standard VAP question set. During the nomination process, the member will provide the question for the assessor to ask and the guidance to determine conformance.
Through the ACP, a supplier can reduce the number of assessments needed by completing a single VAP assessment, which covers all lines of business, and sharing the results with multiple customers. Each member that nominates the supplier commits to accepting the VAP and the VAP supplement of custom questions with no further assessment requirements (except those required by the VAP process) through the valid period of the assessment.
RBA members can log into RBA-Online to access the ACP nomination process.
