ELEVATE Responsible
Sourcing Assessment 2.0
What is ELEVATE Responsible Sourcing Assessment (ERSA)?
ERSA is a progressive, premium solution to industry social compliance audits. Integrated seamlessly with ELEVATE’s supply chain intelligence ecosystem, EiQ, ERSA helps brands adopt responsible sourcing activities and respond to emerging risks through a flexible program effectiveness plan.
Enhanced ERSA 2.0
ERSA 2.0 introduces a series of enhancements to the previous assessment including:
- Enhanced Reporting
- Integration of anonymous Worker Sentiment Survey
- Refined ERSA Standard
- Updated Rating Methodology
- Updated Scoring Methodology
With ERSA 2.0, you can:
Monitor compliance with standards and laws
Proactively stay compliant with social and environmental laws and ESG regulations to safeguard your business from negative press and reduce risks to your brand.
Obtain a Holistic & Comprehensive Review of Your Site’s Performance
ERSA 2.0 provides you with a holistic,
comprehensive overview of your supplier performance at the program and factory level.
Improve alignment and partnership with suppliers
ERSA 2.0 provides greater clarity to suppliers on how to think about business-driven social and environmental responsibility initiatives in ways that align with core business objectives.
Managing Remediation and Corrective Action
Work with your facilities to identify and address the root causes of issues and improve operations with an optional Corrective Action Plan process.
Position your company for proactive risk management
ERSA 2.0 offers a snapshot of higher risk areas in your sites that may require additional attention, helping your company develop suitable strategies to manage supply chain risks according to their relative importance.
Establish an infrastructure for ESG reporting
Keeping investor ratings and non-governmental organization (NGO) rankings in mind, the ERSA 2.0 framework enables you to identify and address emerging risks. This investor-grade methodology enables you to easily manage increased reporting.
Impact of ERSA
ERSA 2.0 has helped us to assess the risk level of a supplier across a variety of areas, measured against local, regional, national and international benchmarks. With the factory-based worker surveys, we can understand worker needs and sentiment in a deeper way enabling us to detect sensitive issues in sites where traditional audits have not.
The insights gained from ERSA influence our sustainable sourcing processes and wider sourcing strategy. It gives us the confidence to make business decisions that are in line with our ESG values and priorities, especially as ELEVATE and its assessment framework maintain the same values and commitment to transparency as Kathmandu.
The ELEVATE Responsible Sourcing Assessment (ERSA) is a valuable tool in our social compliance practice, particularly because we can customize it for a Kroger-specific audit with ratings relevant to us.
The ERSA is especially helpful because it gives us a clear indication of our vendors’ compliance status, which we then communicate to our internal merchandising team. The way ERSA is formatted makes it very easy to see where vendors are scoring lower and address those areas accordingly.
We also appreciate the worker sentiment survey and scores that are part of the audit package. While each facility is expected to comply with Kroger’s Vendor Code of Conduct, hearing and understanding worker sentiment is a key feedback mechanism.
The ELEVATE team are wonderful partners who continue to help us take our social compliance program to the next level.
Exclusive insights and data through ERSA 2.0
Integration of Anonymous Worker Sentiment Survey Results
This integration allows ERSA to collect more reliable and trustworthy data from a workers point of view. This includes sensitive topics like harassment and discrimination.
Designed to Drive Transparency & Continuous Improvement
ERSA is ingrained with ELEVATE’s values of transparency and integrity which means reliable and accurate disclosures about your manufacturer.
User-friendly Reports for Various Stakeholders
Our audit report findings are explained in simple terms with an intuitive design so that various stakeholders within your company can use it to make any sourcing decisions.
Seamless Integration with EiQ
By accessing ERSA through the EiQ platform, companies can track supplier, factory and site performance and identify and evaluate supply chain risks on a granular level.
Business Driven Sustainability
As a pragmatic partner, ELEVATE’s assessment addresses social needs with the reality of business operations using a product-agnostic approach.
Coverage
ERSA 2.0 addresses key issues across five pillars and 300+ checklist questions to determine the risk of a factory and its supply chain pose to your operations.
ERSA Five Pillars
Labor
- Hiring, Disciplinary and Termination
- Child Labor
- Forced Labor and Migrant Workers
- Harassment or Abuse
- Non-Discrimination
- Freedom of Association & Grievance Mechanisms
- Wages and Benefits
- Hours of Work
Health & Safety
- General Work Environment
- Building Safety
- Emergency Preparedness
- Chemical & Hazardous Substances
- Employee Protection & Machine Safety
- Electrical Safety
- Dormitory
- Kitchen & Canteen
Environment
- Environmental Management Program
- Environmental Permits / Licenses / Approvals
- Air Emission
- Waste Water
- Hazardous and Non-Hazardous Waste
Business Ethics
- Transparency and Business Integrity
- Business License & Government Permits
- Non-Retaliation
Management Systems
- Homework
- Subcontracting
ERSA Auditors
All ELEVATE auditors are equipped with the knowledge and training to perform industry standards audits and an ERSA audit. Our auditors not only have the necessary education and work experience, but they also possess the following:
- Local and international legal requirements
- Knowledge of standards and intricacies of the industry
- Proficiency in English and the local language
- Cultural awareness and sensitivity
- Integrity
Customizable proprietary supply chain risk framework
Get detailed insight into facilities according to your business needs through reliable, tailored assessments without extensive time investments for completely customized audits.
Incorporate elements of your existing audits to ERSA and implement a custom audit that best suits your needs. Contact us to find out how you can tailor ERSA for your company.
Companies that have adopted ERSA exclusively
Client Testimonials
ELEVATE continues to be progressive in their approach to auditing, bringing more uniqueness to their work and a forward-thinking vision that aligns with ACCO’s program. We really value ERSA’s Supplemental Data Sheet (SDS) report and the Workers voice surveys, they are amazing reports for transparency purposes. ERSA 2.0 is going to provide more reporting attributes and will be an easier one stop source of information which will make our reporting capabilities much easier. We continue to enjoy the partnership with Elevate to be creative and proactive in building our future compliance program.
Delia Cardenas
Director, Global Vendor Compliance, ACCO Brands
ERSA 2.0 reports are very useful to see the true nature of audit results. They provide easy comparisons of your factory to the rest of the country or region. In addition, they quickly show if there are inconsistencies between audit findings and employees perception of the workplace through interviews and surveys.
Steve Peterson
Compliance Manager, Lands’ End, Inc.
What initially attracted us to work with ELEVATE was the user-friendly platform that ELEVATE provides through EiQ and how much more data is visible to us. Between the ERSA audit, workers survey and supplemental data sheets, ELEVATE provides important full-picture information that helps our Sustainability team better understand factory dynamics and potential improvement areas.
Carly Spagnola
Senior Associate, Social Compliance, Everlane
