Understanding Social Traders certification

Social Traders certification identifies social enterprises. Buyers use it to find social enterprises to buy from.

Finding social enterprises

Buyers in government and the private sector use Social Traders certification to find businesses that trade to create social or environmental impact. This verification helps buyers know that their spending goes to genuine social enterprises. The process of getting certified is how a business proves its social purpose and trading model. To apply, a business must meet specific guidelines. Check Social Traders directly for the current criteria. The criteria are designed to ensure that certified organisations are run for a social mission and reinvest their profits to support that mission.

The administrative work

Applying for verification requires organising business records, answering questions about operations, and explaining how the enterprise works. This is the administrative work that can take a lot of time. It involves gathering documents, checking details, and writing explanations about the business model. People often spend hours chasing documents and filling out forms. This is the glue work of the application. It is the repetitive task of copying information from one place to another and explaining the same business operations multiple times.

The cost of the paperwork

This administrative work has a cost in time and focus. When staff are busy with forms and chasing records, they are not working on their main tasks. For a small business or a social enterprise, this can mean less time spent on the social mission itself. Using artificial intelligence can help manage this administrative burden. AI can handle the repetitive parts of the work, such as organising information and drafting responses based on existing business documents. This allows the people in the business to focus on making decisions and running the enterprise.

The drafting and the final decision

AI can draft the answers to application questions by using the information in business documents. It can organise the records and prepare the drafts for review. This takes away the repetitive writing and the chasing of details. People keep the part of the work that requires human judgment. A person must review the drafts, check the facts, and make the final decisions. The person is the one who signs the application and decides what is worth doing. AI does the drafting, but the person keeps the control.

Creating training materials

This way of working is suited to tasks that involve a lot of writing and organising. For example, preparing training materials or staff inductions can involve similar repetitive work. You can learn more about making a staff training video from a policy to see how this works in other areas. By setting clear rules for how the AI should work, you can make the process more accessible. For details on how to set up these rules, read about how to set your AIs rules once with custom instructions to make AI accessible. This helps ensure the AI drafts match your business voice and needs.

Opening up the application process

Using AI to handle the administrative tasks of Social Traders certification allows more people to participate in the process without being overwhelmed by the paperwork.

If your organisation buys through social procurement, see social procurement with aXai: what you can buy from aXai and the supplier evidence we provide a procurement team.

aXai is a disability-led studio that turns ideas into software and content with AI. AI takes the glue work — the chasing, the forms, the fourteenth retelling. People keep the part that was always theirs: deciding what is worth doing, and making it. New ideas. A different way of working. Read how AI-supported work works.