Start Your Application
The application process is a simple, online self-certification with questions regarding our 10 components for accreditation.
Once you have read what the requirements are for your organisation’s sector and size, you can work through the questions for self certification. We will then get in touch with you with any queries we have. If you meet our standard for each component, your organisation will receive accreditation. There is no initial application fee, accreditation costs are based on the size of your organisation.
If you are not sure if you fulfil a requirement or you don’t know if it will be possible for you to meet a certain criteria, please get in touch with us.
Organisation size
The GBC is open to all companies and public sector and third sector organisations, whatever your size. For organisations with up to 50 employees we have worked in collaboration with Federation of Small Businesses to develop a streamlined version.
Please see below for the questions you will be asked.
Answering the questions
Accreditation to the Good Business Charter requires you to meet each of the 10 components if you are a company or 9 if you are a public sector or third sector organisation. Please see above for summaries of the questions which you can download and print or circulate to specific colleagues in your organisation.
In the majority of cases you will be asked if you are currently fulfilling a certain criterion for the Good Business Charter. If you answer ‘No’, you will be asked if you commit to do it going forwards. Our focus is on good intent in this regard. So a commitment going forwards means that within 3 months (or 12 months for tax) you will have started to put any changes required into motion. Some of the detail may take a few months to implement and we are definitely not expecting that to be fully in place within 3 months. Intent and commitment is the key.
For more information on what is required to fulfil each component of the Good Business Charter please click on the individual icons below.
The Good Business Charter also commits organisations to display the GBC logo in a prominent, permanent place on their website and promote it internally and externally. This commitment to ensure their workforce and wider stakeholders know about the commitments they have made is a requirement of fully completing their accreditation.
Not sure you can meet the requirements for one of the components?
If you are concerned that you will not be able to answer these questions but believe that your business, public sector organisation or charity practices follow the spirit of this component, please consult with us so that we can make a judgement on whether we believe you meet the requirements of the component.
We are really keen to have organisations of all sizes and from all types of industries and sectors joining the Good Business Charter. These are standard questions and for some organisations there may be questions that are just not relevant or too onerous. We want to hear from you if you feel that is the case and we will take a sympathetic view.
Equally, organisations with a smaller number of employees may feel that the wording of the questions is rather technical for the way they operate. We do not want to exclude anyone behaving responsibly just because they feel this has not been designed with their organisation’s size or industry in mind. We encourage you to apply the questions to your own unique setting and if in doubt, do contact us to explain the way in which you believe in your own way that you meet this component so that together we can consider whether it is sufficient or what else may be necessary to receive GBC accreditation.
The 10 Components
Rejection policy
We reserve the right to reject an application if we feel that an organisation does not work at the standard of the Good Business Charter for one or more of our 10 components. You can view our protocol on rejecting organisations here.
If you have any questions regarding GBC accreditation, please do contact us.