There are a myriad of sustainability claims in the market today. The Good Practice Guide was developed through a multi-stakeholder consultation process to define good practice for scheme owners in setting and managing claims about their standards system.

Please note: The ISEAL Impacts, Standard-Setting and Assurance Codes referenced in this guidance are no longer in effect. 

The ISEAL Code of Good Practice for Sustainability Systems (‘the ISEAL Code’) came into effect on 1 March 2024, replacing the ISEAL Impacts, Standard-Setting and Assurance Codes of Good Practice. The content within this guidance is still relevant due to the level of consistency between the ISEAL Code and Impacts, Standard-Setting and Assurance Codes. If you have any questions, please contact compliance@isealalliance.org.

Sustainability standards are increasingly expected to communicate their positive impacts. Good impact communication improves accountability, leads to stronger buy-in from stakeholders, and secures and strengthens partnerships. Yet impact claims are tricky, present distinct challenges and can seriously affect credibility when wrong. This guidance equips sustainability standards with practical tips on how they can make their impact claims more meaningful and effective with confidence and accuracy.

Misleading, false, meaningless or unclear information shared through claims can result in consumers, businesses, supply chains partners and even producers losing confidence in the difference that using or supporting a certain standard can make. It could also result in unfair business competition, over-claiming of impact and can discourage truthful claims. Impact claims that are misleading, even if factually correct, can also contravene national and international legislation.

Consequently, many standards systems are reluctant to make claims regarding their broad, high-level impacts or even the intermediate outcomes they achieve. In addition, impact claims are liable to greater scrutiny, and even scepticism, by external reviewers and so careful thought, planning, drafting and review mechanisms are needed to ensure they are effective and credible.

Guidance in this document is based in part on dialogue with ISEAL members, who are sincerely thanked for their time and ideas, and in part on dialogue and research more widely within the international development community and other sectors.

There has been much research into the impact of the international development sector, but good practice in communication of impacts and outcomes is less well developed. Given the complexity of issues the international development and sustainability sector tackles, guidance on impact claims tends to be theoretical and model-based, as opposed to practical.

The guidelines and checklists in this document are not expected to cover all eventualities or eliminate all types of misrepresentation; they should be adapted to your context and used with discretion. We hope however that it gives standards systems and their users, greater confidence on how to make credible and effective impact claims that are consistent with good practice.

ISEAL's guiding framework to support companies and sustainability systems to make credible living wage claims.

Since January 2021, ISEAL has been working with sustainability standards and schemes to strengthen their systems and processes to support credible supply chain action on living wages. As part of this work, ISEAL has developed a guiding framework for credible living wage claims, which was open for public consultation in Aug-Sept 2023. It was developed following interviews and input from a range of standard setting organisations, companies and trade union representatives working on this topic. It is focused on claims about living wages, but the framework could be adapted for other types of issue-based claims.

The guiding framework aims to advance the understanding of good practice for sustainability standards and companies working in this space, leading to improvements in sustainability system robustness to meet living wage goals and directly support business needs in their supply chains. The document is available in both English and Spanish.