Ask The Workers - not death by survey

Sep 8

5 min read

In our last post, we covered why sharing worker voice data is difficult.

Our last post is here: Sharing worker voice data

There are legal, commercial and practical challenges to be addressed, especially when surveys of workers are used, in summary:

Surveys should not be "one-size-fits-all":
- Business sponsors (like retailers and brands) do not always want the same questions asked.
- Workplaces are different, and not all workers should get the same questions.
If you paid for a survey, why should others get the benefit of it?
Sharing data collected via the survey could lead to legal liability, privacy concerns, breach of trust and requiring businesses to sign agreements with each other before data can be shared.

Ask The Workers has been able to design a platform to take advantage of modern technology, improving on the data-sharing model pioneered by social audit.

Avoiding death by survey and sharing working voice data

We know that surveys are becoming an issue with suppliers. Time and again suppliers are telling us that they are too busy this month with that survey, and then next month with another - and they are struggling with all of them. This is what we mean by "death by survey".

Ask The Workers is continuous worker voice - it is not a snapshot survey. Workers answer questions every day via an app on their phone, which they can use where-ever they like and ideally when they are not at work. The full model is described on our website (see www.es3g.com).

Already this starts to resolve many of the challenges. Read on to see what the complete solution looks like.

Avoiding death by survey - here is how we do it.

Architecture

Sounds complicated, but actually this is a simple point. We operate a single global server. Worker responses are stored there linked to the workplace where they work. With one global store, deciding who can see what becomes a matter of permissions and does not involve moving data around.

Workplace: We collect responses from workers at a workplace, and give permission for that workplace to see summarised data from those workers in its dashboard, with anonymity and safeguarding protections built in.

Sponsors: We show many workplaces in a single Sponsor dashboard at the same time, with drill down as users require. Adding another workplace to a Sponsor dashboard is just giving permission for that Sponsor to see responses from workers at that workplace. It is a click of a mouse, the dashboard updates.

Question packs

As we have already set out, worker voice is not a one-size-fits-all model. There are good reasons why questions should be varied by workplace, by time and even within a workplace. The requirement is therefore:

To have different questions for different workplaces, whilst still rolling up the data into industry standard categories (eg: ETI base codes) so comparisons and tracking are easy.
Be able to vary questions dynamically any day by workplace - adding them, taking them away - as needed to investigate findings.
Be able to isolate demographic groups within a workplace if additional questions are needed and should only be asked to a segment of the workforce (eg: only migrant workers, only workers living in employer-provided accommodation)
To enable business sponsors (retailers, brands etc - we call them "Sponsors") to have their own questions, with responses being only for them, as they wish.

Our "question pack" model supports all these capabilities. Question packs are additional sets of questions that can be dropped onto workplaces to look at specific risks or confirm policy delivery to a workforce (eg: responsible recruitment), with control over which workers see the questions and which Sponsors have the responses rolling up into their dashboards .

From the worker side, they are simply unaware that these variations might be happening dynamically and in the background. They have the Ask The Workers app on their phone or via a shared device - they respond to the questions that they are served - that's it.

Workers own the response data

The data we store in our platform does not belong to workplaces and it does not belong to Sponsors. It belongs to workers. If a Sponsor leaves our platform, there is nothing of theirs to delete - same for a workplace.

It means we do not get into "data sharing" agreements between businesses, complex trusts, worries about liability management and privacy.

Workers license the data to Ask The Workers to be used in dashboards and reports - and when businesses work with us, what business gets and pays for is a software license to view our dashboards and reports - not a right to see or touch the underlying data.

We do not share data that belongs to others - we provide dashboards and reports that belong to us at Ask The Workers that we create based on the limited license granted to us by workers in respect of their data which we store in our platform.

Commercial arrangements are simple

Once the legal and practical questions are resolved, the commercial questions then become quite straightforward.

Remarkably, a continuous worker voice platform is much less work to set up and operate than a survey.

That's principally because:

There is no stop-start-analysis-report-action cycle involved. The platform is dynamic and continuous.
Our clients start off with our standard questions, so there is no consulting phase to decide on the set up and questions. We just switch on. That's because the questions can be changed easily over time, so there is no pressure to get everything right at the beginning.
The Ask The Workers app is simple and workers can use it without training. They do need to know what is going on and why - they need to be informed - but that is quite a quick process and once the app is running, it just continues.
And the Ask The Workers app is typically used by workers when they are not at their workstations - so there is no interruption for suppliers.

This all means that there are no heavy upfront costs that we look to any one Sponsor to cover. This is not like a survey where the Sponsor pays for it, designs it, supervises it and receives the results. At Ask The Workers, we bear the set up costs for each workplace and each Sponsor has the same costs to add results from that workplace into their dashboards.

It does not matter whether you are the first Sponsor or the tenth. The cost is the same - streamlined and supported by the investment we make in every workplace implementation.

Avoid death by survey - Ask The Workers is the answer

The Ask The Workers model avoids the conflicts of interest that can be found in other data sharing models, side-steps the legal challenges via an innovative approach, and streamlines the commercial considerations as the set up costs per workplace are modest and we can absorb them.

Continuous worker voice and Ask The Workers is the approach to worker voice that business has been waiting for.

Find out more and ask us for call?

Click here for our guide to worker voice - and see the bigger picture that continuous worker voice supports.