Application process
Achieving your Good Business Charter accreditation is a significant milestone, and we aim to make the process as seamless as possible. This page will guide you through what to expect when applying, covering the application timeline, detailed requirements, communication process and invoicing. Our team is dedicated to supporting you throughout, ensuring your path to accreditation is smooth and successful, reflecting your commitment to exemplary business practices.
Application questions
The GBC is open to all companies, the 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.
For more information on what is required to fulfil each component of the Good Business Charter please click on the individual icons below. You can also consult our Frequently Asked Questions.
The Good Business Charter also requires 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?
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
Costs
There is no initial application fee and accreditation costs are based on the size of your organisation. To find out about the annual accreditation fees, please visit our costs page.
Our commitment and expectations for accredited organisations
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.