Social Standards

What are social standards?

With the help of the meanwhile worldwide recognized model of sustained development, not only economic but also social and ecologically future-oriented measures are to be developed for operating the economy, as this is the only way of providing for justice between the generations and the people in the whole world. This is a high claim and many politicians and economic experts advocate it all the time.

However, reality in real life looks different. Companies striving for short term profit, politicians with one eye on the next elections, the statements by opportunistic economic pundits or consumers under the everyday financial pressure do not (yet) permit the necessary sustained way of living and operating an economy.

The social dimension is often neglected beside the economic and ecological dimension of sustained development.

So called Social Criteria are used for the implementation and assessment of the social dimension. There are not yet any generally applicable criteria but the following points are relevant to social sustainability:

• social responsibility of management towards the employees and external stakeholders
• staff development as well as the future of the jobs
• payment of appropriate remuneration
• quality of the jobs
• design of industrial safety
• prevention of social discrimination
• adherence to collective agreements
• qualification and further training in the sense of lifelong learning
• possibility of organising the employees
• participation of the workforce in the internal company processes

The substantiation of the criteria and the definition of comparable standards is a development process that we want to support with this website.

For further information on sustainable development and social standards see the publication Social Standards and Social Certification in Europe.