AskTheWorkers.com

Stakeholder engagement is at the heart of new legislation on forced labour, modern slavery and labour rights due diligence, whether that is FLPA, CSDDD or proposed draft bill to upgrade the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015.

Who are these stakeholders, how do we engage them?

That is an interesting question. There are many potential stakeholders on the scene - the supplier itself, trade unions, NGOs, social commentators, authorities.

But the workers themselves are the most important stakeholders to consult.

Workers can tell you if:

• They have their documents or paid fees to get their job

• That locked fire-door has been unlocked and has stayed unlocked

• They experience harassment or discrimination

• Their pay matches what they are owed

• They can say "no" to overtime, or are working crazy hours

• There is reasonable access to water, and reasonable breaks during the day

Workers are the stakeholders in labour rights that truly count.

Ask The Workers. Asking the workers is not difficult.

We use an app to enable workers to provide their feedback - all-the-workers, all-the-time. If you want to see our app for yourself - see how to get a test location code from us at the bottom of this post.

How do we Ask The Workers?

Anyone can download our app from the Play Store or the App Store - it is called Ask The Workers.

Workers then authenticate themselves to our app with a location code. That is a code we generate that is unique for each workplace.

• It is only available from the workplace itself.

• This is a simple way for workers to be linked to a workplace without them having to give their names, emails or phone numbers.

• We have authenticity AND anonymity.

Workers, once authenticated, can use our app every day to tell us how their labour rights are respected day-to-day. This is not a survey - it is all-the-workers, all-the-time.

Workers tell us, so we can tell you.

It is that simple. Of course there is some high quality engineering involved as making all this work at scale with high performance, coping with 10000s of workers and millions of data points needs expertise. That's what we deliver behind the scenes.

Why have www.asktheworkers.com?

Workers should be providing their feedback and their data to us (and to you) voluntarily.

See this blog post for the dangers in using / relying on feedback from workers that is not provided voluntarily: https://www.es3g.com/post/is-it-okay-to-collect-data-directly-from-workers-in-a-social-audit.

It is very important that workers understand:

• Who is getting the data that they provide?

• What is it being used for?

• Is it safe for them to provide honest feedback?

• What safeguards are in place to protect their anonymity?

The main goal of the asktheworkers.com website is to provide answers to these questions via a short video in the spoken language of the worker. This builds confidence, knowledge and assurance amongst the workforce and means that workers are more likely to provide honest feedback at scale. And this is the what we want.

There is a secondary goal, which is to make sure workers know how to use our app without needing training. Our AskTheWorkers app is fully aligned with the user interface standards that are typically used across apps worldwide. On top, workers can provide their feedback without typing - and it takes a minute or so to do it. But even then, we want to make sure that workers are comfortable using the app and understand how to give their feedback.

Do note that the asktheworkers.com website is designed for use on mobiles not desktops - it is deliberately quite plain and simple.

Ask The Workers - what next?

If you would like to try out our app, download it to your phone from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store and just email us here to get a test location code by return.

Our test location code will allow you to:

• Authenticate to the app so you can use it

• Select your language (20+ now supported)

• See our daily question flow - and experience the app just as a worker would

• Send a test grievance message

• Even claim a prize (although we don't pay out on the test system, sorry!)

Contact us

Let us know what you think. You can contact us in numerous ways:

• By email using the button at the bottom of our home page (here) or just send an email to info@es3g.com

• Or book a short call directly with us (here)