Compliance & Sustainability

The Compliance and Sustainability department covers factory social compliance, environmental sustainability, and worker safety certification. It teaches SEDEX SMETA, the WRAP 12 Principles, OEKO-TEX Standard 100, the Higg Index FEM and FSLM modules, and fire and building safety standard operating procedures. This work suits compliance managers, ESG leads, EHS inspectors and social audit officers, and it rewards people who keep evidence, because an audit is passed on records as much as on conditions.

A social compliance audit looks at working hours, wages, health and safety, building and fire safety, and environmental management, and a failed audit can cost a factory its orders. The department teaches each framework as a system to run year round, not as a performance staged for audit week: how a SMETA audit is structured, what the WRAP principles require in daily practice, what OEKO-TEX certification covers for products, and how Higg FEM and FSLM self assessments feed buyer decisions. Requirements, limits and certificate validity periods change over time, so readers should verify any specific figure against the current law, buyer code or standard before acting on it.

The Social Compliance SEDEX WRAP SOP course is the main study path for this department, with 24 lessons across six modules, and it connects to the compliance guides on this site and to the Commercial Management department for the legal side of compliance. Readers who study SMETA first, then WRAP, then environmental and safety modules will have a complete audit readiness path.

If you prepare factories for buyer audits, run EHS systems, or want to, this department is the standard reference. From here, the Quality Assurance department covers the product inspections that buyers pair with social audits, and the Factory Management department covers the management systems that keep compliance running between audits. Internal audits between buyer audits matter just as much, because they catch missing records and unsafe practices while there is still time to correct them.