SGS Charter Mark Assessment Method - The...

Your assessment will be undertaken in three stages. You also have several optional services available to you so we can tailor our service to suit your needs.

Stage 1 – Document Review

Your designated Assessor will carry out a document review on your application pack prepared by you, this enables your assessor to gain an understanding of how the organisation has met the requirements of the Charter Mark standard. We have created a simple tool to help you put your application together, it is not mandatory that you use this tool to apply but it gives you some guidance on how to prepare your application. A typical application can be about 10 pages of A4 supported by a single box file of evidence. The document review can take place either at your site or can be sent off to the assessor to review off site.

You can download a copy of the SGS Charter Mark application tool here.

Following this document review a report will be prepared that outlines the areas that will be the focus of the next stage of the assessment. In addition the assessor will phone you to discuss the report and the next stage. The report will also include an itinerary for your on-site assessment.

Stage 2 – Onsite Assessment

The next stage is the on-site assessment. This is typically 1 day onsite but may vary depending on the staff numbers and sites covered by your application. The aim of this part of the assessment is to obtain objective evidence that you are meeting the requirements of the Charter Mark standard. Evidence is obtained from the review of documents, interviews with staff, customers, partner organisations and senior management. In view of the customer focus of Charter Mark the opinions of customers are considered of great importance.

The on-site assessment closes with a meeting where the assessor summarises the findings of the assessment and states if the organisation is being recommended for Charter Mark Status.

Scoring Mechanism
During the assessment process the Charter Mark criteria are scored on a four-band scale:

Best Practice all aspects of the element are met, and the applicant can demonstrate that they have gone beyond the requirements

Full compliance all aspects of the element are met.

Partial compliance some but not all aspects of the element are met and remedial action to meet the remainder could be put in place within a short period of time (maximum three months)

Major non-compliance - the requirements of the element are not met
The scheme allows the applicant a maximum number of partial non-compliance's that equates to a pass mark of 70%.

A detailed report of the findings is then prepared by your assessor, this includes areas where the organisation was partially compliant as well as areas of good and best practice.
Included in your report will be an action plan.  This is produced to help aid continuous improvement within your organisation and encourage development of areas within your business planning.