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Independent External Assessment
What is an Independent External Assessment (IEA)?
An IEA is essentially an impact assessment that helps gauge whether or not compliance systems at the factory level are sustainable. An IEA report is conducted by an independent external assessor accredited by the FLA. The IEA procedure extends the usual SCOPE workers survey to include a focus group discussion with middle management and supervisors, respectively. This is to capture extra information and to present findings complementary to the quantitative analysis. In the IEA report, the assessor presents the observations and results from the factory’s self-assessment and those from the workers’ survey, before and after the capacity building phase. The assessor thus takes a closer look at whether there is a gap between the perception of management and that of the workers on the assessed issue. In addition, the assessor also reviews and comments on the factory’s documents submitted along with the management self-assessment.
The IEA report enables the factory, the participating company and the FLA staff to do the following:
An IEA is essentially an impact assessment that helps gauge whether or not compliance systems at the factory level are sustainable. An IEA report is conducted by an independent external assessor accredited by the FLA. The IEA procedure extends the usual SCOPE workers survey to include a focus group discussion with middle management and supervisors, respectively. This is to capture extra information and to present findings complementary to the quantitative analysis. In the IEA report, the assessor presents the observations and results from the factory’s self-assessment and those from the workers’ survey, before and after the capacity building phase. The assessor thus takes a closer look at whether there is a gap between the perception of management and that of the workers on the assessed issue. In addition, the assessor also reviews and comments on the factory’s documents submitted along with the management self-assessment.
The IEA report enables the factory, the participating company and the FLA staff to do the following:
- Compare Findings: The baseline assessment contains a management self-assessment and a workers survey. After approximately 12 months of capacity building and training, the factory is subjected to an IEA. In addition to the factory’s self-evaluation, an extended workers survey will be conducted by the IEA assessor. The IEA report refers to findings from the two management self-assessments and those from the workers surveys, and provides a comparative analysis of these results.
- Detect Root Causes: The IEA report includes comments from the independent external assessor on every aspect of the factory systems related to the priority issue (policy, procedure, communication, worker integration, and so forth). Such information helps to detect root causes for ongoing problems and to discover factors that might lead to recurring noncompliance.
- Evaluate Progress: The report includes a summary of what has been done by the factory during the capacity building phase and highlights where improvement or regression of the factory’s performance over time.