The Fonds’ Relationships with workers team is responsible for performing social acceptability analysis and social audits. As documented previously, social audits cover many aspects (quantitative and qualitative information collected), including:

• Number of jobs created or maintained;
• Health and safety performance;
• Quality of employee-management communication and relationship, whether employees are unionized or not;
• Compliance with human and workers’ rights legislations, including pay equity and harassment laws;
• Community investments and involvement, including donations, sponsorships, employee volunteering programs and internship programs.

Social audits always comprise on-site visits and confidential interviews with stakeholders. At this stage, investments might be turned down if social risks are deemed too high, or improvements in social practices might be recommended.

Adding to the documents that must be prepared by the Relationships with workers team, investment teams must complete a section in their financial analysis relating to the social aspects of the transaction under study. At this stage, an investment might be turned down if social risks are deemed too high.

The results of each and every social audit must be considered by the Investment committee and must be discussed at the board level, when required due to an investment size.