EcoVadis Rating is evidence-based, requiring companies to provide formalized, recent, and pre-existing documentation that is a reliable element of the company’s sustainability management system. Since credible supporting documents are critical to the assessment, EcoVadis has a rigorous, multi-faceted program to verify the integrity of the evidence.
The following documents will not be considered as evidence and will not be accepted:
- Documents (commitments, actions, and reporting) created solely for satisfying the EcoVadis questionnaire;
- Documents copied from another organization or online sources without reasonable evidence and assurance of implementation;
- Forged certificates and/or third-party documents (e.g., audit reports).
Read more about the format and validity period of the supporting documents.
How does EcoVadis verify the credibility of documents?
EcoVadis has an internal mechanism in place to detect dubious documents. Additionally, our analysts can report dubious cases to an internal, dedicated internal team. We put certificates submitted through a systematic verification process to check their validity as well as the reliability of the certifying bodies. For other third-party documents, our analysts will verify their validity with respective external bodies in cases where dubious symptoms are identified. EcoVadis has also established a partnership with a software provider to detect the presence of plagiarized content. This accurate, reliable, and confidential tool allows our analysts to determine whether the documents are authentic, trustworthy, and credible.
What are the consequences of submitting dubious documents?
Your documents will be rejected if they are found to be specifically prepared for our assessment, extensively plagiarized from external sources without an adequate level of adaptation, and/or falsified upon verification. A specific comment from our analysts will also be shown on your scorecard and visible to the requesting companies.
For cases where an extensive number of documents submitted are similar to the documents of other unrelated assessed companies or submission of forged certificates/ third-party documents, our team will take the following actions to ensure the integrity of evidence:
- All the internal documents newly submitted will not be considered in the analysis
- A specific comment from our analysts will be shown on your scorecard to explain the situation
- Requesting companies will be alerted of the cases
Therefore, submitting dubious and/or forged documents could severely affect your company and your relationship with your trading partners.
For more information and examples of documents that can be provided, please download our document guide.
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