Continuous worker voice

Ask The Workers is the world's first "continuous worker voice" platform.

What is "continuous worker voice"?

This post explains how continuous worker voice can be made to work in practice and highlights important benefits that the technology delivers.

As you will read, it is surprisingly easy to implement and can be a low cost way to deliver "meaningful stakeholder engagement".

Continuous worker voice - what is it?

Continuous worker voice connects all-the-workers, all-the-time to business delivering real-time data on how labour rights (and even human rights) are being observed.

"Business" means three things:

• The workplace itself,

• Organisations (ie: employers) who are providing labour to that workplace

• Organisations we call "stakeholders" in this context; these are corporate 3rd parties who may have leverage to encourage and influence how labour rights are observed day-to-day, including customers, unions, trade bodies and even government departments.

This is real-time data, delivered all-the-time, where all-the-workers are able to feedback on their daily working experience: voluntarily, anonymously and authentically.

As one of the leading human rights consulting firms said to us

"We consider Ask the workers to be a brilliant solution to a very difficult problem, for which no solution has yet existed."

The continuous worker voice app

Download: Workers download an app from the Play Store or the App Store.

• Using an app means anyone can download the app as it is universally available to everyone. You can download it yourself.

• Apart from notifications, the app takes no permissions on the phone (no geolocation, no sharing of data or media).

• The user selects the language in which they want to use the app.

Anonymous authentication: Workers authenticate themselves to the app using a location code that they find in their workplace.

• The app only works with the cooperation of the workplace involved - because it is important that workers are only commenting on locations where they actually work. Workers link themselves to their workplace using a location code that is available from inside the working space - posted by the workplace.

• If you would like to try our app, please email us here: info@es3g.com and we will provide you with a test location code that will enable you to try Ask The Workers yourself.

Demographic: Workers provide basic demographic information about themselves without typing.

• The worker only does this once by answering a series of questions without typing to identify their nationality, age range, employer, gender etc.

• This data is used for root cause diagnosis and analysis if there are findings emerging from feedback from workers.

1 minute per day: Each day, workers can take one minute to provide feedback on 10 questions about their labour rights and working conditions, without typing:

• Each worker answers 10 questions that are pulled randomly from a larger panel (of 50, 100, 150+ questions).

• Since all workers can do this, all the questions in the whole panel are usually answered 10, 20, 30+ times every day.

• Questions can be changed every day if there are matters arising to look at in more detail.

Incentives: Workers are incentivised to use the app via two methods:

• We require that workers receive monthly feedback from their workplace about what is being said and what might be done about any findings emerging. This is the most important point.

• Workers receive compensation for their time (1 minute per day) via participation in a prize draw for small money prizes managed by the app.

No typing!

Keeping the app simple is key to frequent use. This means:

• Each cycle of the app takes little time.

• Workers are attracted back via design and engagement.

• No typing, just clicking and swiping.

• Keeping the app focussed on its task: collecting feedback on working conditions

What does continuous worker voice data look like?

A typical implementation of Ask The Workers delivers 2,000+ data points on each workplace every day - the amount of data typically depending on how many workers there are in the workplace.

That could be 50,000 + data points every month.

Ask The Workers data already shows that the app, if operated correctly in line with the two main incentive principles (feedback and rewards), can deliver a material level of sustained participation by workers over the long term, with very little cost.

Data is simply presented to stakeholders

The data collected is provided to both the workplace itself and its stakeholders (eg: customers, unions, trade bodies). This is real-time data summarised and mapped against the ETI base codes - via simple, and easy to understand dashboards that enable users quickly to understand worker feedback and what might be important.

Why does the workplace get a dashboard?

Ask The Workers data provided to stakeholders and also to the workplace itself.

Workplaces see data from their workers in real time

This model encourages good conduct and self-remedy by the workplace without stakeholders needing to intervene.

Workplaces know that their stakeholders are seeing the same data at the same time.

Our data shows that this leads to workplaces responding immediately to issues that workers are identifying, without being prompted externally.

Transparency means that workplaces become incentivised to ensure they implement the labour rights policies that they sign up to.

Voluntarily, anonymously and authentically

These are three key words.

Voluntarily

Most worker feedback using conventional due diligence tools is not voluntary.

Surveys are usually pushed onto workers who may even be assembled and monitored as they provide answers to achieve high participation. Workers selected for interview in social audit are usually identifiable by workplace management and often have little choice over their participation.

Since Ask The Workers is an app, workers can use the app anywhere at any time. In fact, we expect that workers will use the app when they are not at work. Workers can choose whether to use the app - see above about incentives.

Our experience is that workers will choose to use the app to provide feedback if they understand it is safe and that they will benefit from the data they provide.

Anonymously

This is where most systems fall down. Providing workers with unique "web-links" or asking them to identify themselves (name, email, phone number, worker number) means responses get linked directly to an individual.

It also means that systems which combine worker surveys with the delivery of training, HR processes, capturing documents, keeping records are not usually anonymous. The system provider might try to reassure workers that their responses will not be shared with their employer - but experience shows that workers can remain quite suspicious of the system.

Whilst workers might given assurances that their workplace cannot work out who is saying what - the danger remains.

The Ask The Workers system is truly anonymous.

• Anyone can download the app from the Play Store or the App Store

• Workers authenticate via a location code - so there is no link to their name, phone number, email address or worker id.

This means there is no way to link feedback provided to an individual. Workers realise that they are truly anonymous on the app.

Authentically

The location code model means, although we do not know who workers actually are, they are linked via the code to where they work.

Given anyone can download the app - this step is vital to ensure workers do work at the workplace on which they provide feedback.

Continually and dynamically

Data flows every day.

This means it is possible to see how changes in labour rights and working conditions are changing in real-time - and perhaps to understand:

• Any connection between purchasing practices and the lived-experience of workers

• Impact of workplace issues (interruptions to production etc)

• The impact of remedy as it is being delivered (for example, is that training course actually working?)

• Whether remedy is then sustained (that locked fire door - did it stay unlocked? Workers will tell you!)

There are significant cost savings for stakeholders as a result:

• Corrective action plans can be managed via Ask The Workers - as workers will say if remedy is being delivered and sustained

• Responsible purchase practices can be shown to be responsible:

  • If business needs product quickly - what happens to overtime levels?

  • Are the price points demanded leading to compromises on worker conditions?

And questions can be changed any day

Unlike surveys, it is possible to change the questions any day - and this automatically flows into the app without workers usually noticing.

This means findings can be explored by adjusting questions to dig into details and find out more about what is going on. This is all done remotely - with new data then flowing automatically into dashboards.

Continous worker voice - a breakthrough

New legislation requires:

Meaningful stakeholder engagement

The worker is the stakeholder that counts. They are the "rights' holders".

Meaningful engagement means frequent and sustained, two-way communication.

Continuous worker voice is not expensive, and it delivers authentic data, voluntarily-provided, at scale and direct from workers.

When this is paired with monthly updates back to workers on what workers are saying - the system works and provides sustained evidence that important labour rights policies are being implemented in practice.

How does continuous compare to surveys?

Continuous worker voice is significantly more effective than survey-based alternatives. Here is a brief table that summarises some important differences:

	Ask the workers (continuous, everyone)	Survey (snapshot, sample)
Supplier Cost	No disruption to working hours at the supplier	Disrupts work at the supplier whilst it happens
Operational model	Continuous	Snapshot
Worker engagement (worker presence)	All the workers, all the time	Some workers at survey time
Coaching / manipulation	Most forms can be detected	Hard to detect
Workload (buyer and workplace)	Low technology does the work	High each cycle has a process
Reduces risk	Continuous monitoring reduces chances that workers experience harm	Limited effect
Flexibility	Can be adjusted over time to add questions	Get it right first time
Evidence that change is impactful	Continuous monitoring means impact is measured automatically and real-time	Typically, manual follow upand not captured in real-time or survey has to be repeated

Continue the discussion

Let us know what you think about this topic.

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)