The AA1000 Assurance Standard (AA1000 AS) is a standard for assessing and strengthening the credibility and quality of an organisation’s social, economic and environmental reporting. It is primarily intended for use by external auditing bodies that assure an organisation’s reports or social accounts (Assurance Providers) but can also be used to guide any organisation when building its accountability processes, systems and abilities .
Stakeholder engagement is central to the AA1000 AS. Within organisations it is used as a means of driving overall performance through innovation and learning. ‘Quality’ in terms of the AA1000 AS is the degree to which a reporting organisation is open, engaging and responsive to stakeholder perceptions and expectations.
AA1000 AS is built on two beliefs. First, that accountability processes need to be tailored to identify, understand and respond to issues that are specific to diverse organisations, sectors, stakeholders and strategies. Secondly, that robust, good quality stakeholder engagement processes can powerfully inform internal decision making and enable learning and innovation and thus improved performance.