Since publication of ISO 26000, many books, guides, tools and other initiatives have been launched to try to make ISO 26000 even more operational or locally relevant. This is understandable as the 100 pages long standard offers more than 450 recommendations.
Any international document tool negotiated by 450 experts from 99 countries and 40 international organisations during 5 years will be complex, especially if the finished document is expected to be possible to be used by any organisation and company anywhere in the world.
100 pages of guidance
ISO 26000 offers 100 pages of guidance and can be used in many ways. In general, it is recommended not to pick the cherries by only using a few selected parts, but instead take the time to go through the integration process and apply the full spectrum of socially responsible behavior. In 2012, the ISO 26000 PPO took note of some of the criteria that were being discussed and issued some recommendations to help those developing tools and supporting initiatives. In summary, it is recommended to include all of ISO 26000 and engage relevant stakeholders when developing tools that refer to or interpret ISO 26000.
ISO 26000 Tools
Based on the experience of the author of this website, many tools have a tendency of becoming renegotiated recommendations from the standard and often the company/organisation needs to go back to ISO 26000 or other international documents to sort things out. Also, many tools that aim at helping organisations use ISO 26000, are kept in IT-formats, programs, local databases, that unnecessarily can limit accessibility to some users.
Clause 7, the process management clause of ISO 26000, was written to help the reader integrate social responsibility behavior in any organisation. Clause 7 of is a tool that, when applied, will open up the rest of the clauses in ISO 26000.
Compilation of tools will be presented here as soon as possible.