There are a myriad of sustainability claims in the market today. The Good Practice Guide was developed through a multi-stakeholder consultation process to define good practice for scheme owners in setting and managing claims about their standards system.

Please note: The ISEAL Impacts, Standard-Setting and Assurance Codes referenced in this guidance are no longer in effect. 

The ISEAL Code of Good Practice for Sustainability Systems (‘the ISEAL Code’) came into effect on 1 March 2024, replacing the ISEAL Impacts, Standard-Setting and Assurance Codes of Good Practice. The content within this guidance is still relevant due to the level of consistency between the ISEAL Code and Impacts, Standard-Setting and Assurance Codes. If you have any questions, please contact compliance@isealalliance.org.

This guide lays out good practices for developing and implementing benchmarks of voluntary sustainability systems (VSS). This is the second version of the guide, published in March 2025 following public consultation. It is aligned with the ISEAL Credibility Principles (v2) and the ISEAL Code of Good Practice for Sustainability Systems (‘the ISEAL Code’).  

The recommendations in this guide are framed around key decisions to be made in each of the three phases of the development process. The guide does not prescribe how a benchmark should be structured or the assessment criteria to be included but shares considerations to support those decisions.

Read more about ISEAL's work supporting good practices for credible benchmarking.

ISEAL's guiding framework to support companies and sustainability systems to make credible living wage claims.

Since January 2021, ISEAL has been working with sustainability standards and schemes to strengthen their systems and processes to support credible supply chain action on living wages. As part of this work, ISEAL has developed a guiding framework for credible living wage claims, which was open for public consultation in Aug-Sept 2023. It was developed following interviews and input from a range of standard setting organisations, companies and trade union representatives working on this topic. It is focused on claims about living wages, but the framework could be adapted for other types of issue-based claims.

The guiding framework aims to advance the understanding of good practice for sustainability standards and companies working in this space, leading to improvements in sustainability system robustness to meet living wage goals and directly support business needs in their supply chains. The document is available in both English and Spanish.

ISEAL has developed a good practice guide to help ensure that sustainability claims made by jurisdictions, landscape initiatives, and the companies that source from or support them, are credible. The guidance covers the structural and performance claims a jurisdictional entity may wish to make, along with the supporting action claims of other related stakeholders.

Version 1.0 was published in October 2020 following a consultation process that included a webinar to introduce the key concepts and discuss the draft guidance. The guidance was updated for version 1.1 in March 2022 in line with the launch of ISEAL's effective company actions in landscapes and jurisdictions guiding practices. The update also incorporated learning from two pilot projects with LTKL in Indonesia and PCI in Brazil.