Question

What are the quality and validity requirements for documents, and what makes a strong policy?

EcoVadis assesses documents on three dimensions: relevance, completeness and recency. Generic templates minimally adapted for EcoVadis are not accepted; documents must reflect pre-existing, operational systems and must be issued more than one month before the questionnaire submission date — a document created specifically for the assessment will not work. Every document must carry the company name or logo and a date; missing either can cause rejection regardless of content. You can check each document's age and remaining validity in the platform's Document Library.

Validity periods by type: policies and actions documents — 8 years; KPI and reporting documents — 2 years; certifications — until their stated expiry date.

A strong policy contains: a clear statement of intent aligned with the sustainability topic; qualitative and, where relevant, quantitative targets (SMART); the scope it applies to; named governance ownership (who owns and reviews it); a review mechanism; a date of approval; and the company identifier. Procedures add strength by showing how commitments are operationalised — who does what, when, and how it is monitored. Creating a new version of a structurally sound, regularly reviewed policy is not automatically beneficial: updating the review date is sufficient.