Continuous worker voice: 3 steps to start

Ask The Workers is a ground-breaking, labour-rights, due diligence technology.

The app:

• covers all-the-workers, all-the-time - continuous worker voice

• has zero human involvement in daily operation so costs are low, and

• once set up, the app can just run

Continuous worker voice is easy to start. Most of our clients start with a 6 month pilot covering up to 20 suppliers or locations.

All the workers can use the app, dashboards show real-time feedback, and the costs are low .

But how do you pick the suppliers for the pilot, what do you say to them and what is said to the workers themselves?

Here we explain these three steps.

Workers - who are they?

A large part of the value created by most businesses is delivered by people they don't employ. That can be:

• Workers in your supply chains

• Cleaners, security guards, maintenance staff in your own locations

• Contractors / sub-contractors / casual labour on your own sites

• Out-source partners, whether remote or local

• Franchisees

As many businesses find to their cost, labour rights issues in these workforces can rapidly escalate to affect their own brand - whether or not they were aware.

Ask The Workers is designed to connect you directly to all these workers - people who contribute to your business but whom you don't employ.

Step 1: supplier selection

Most companies have a spread of suppliers, including those where their custom is important; that means they are a client that the supplier would prefer not to lose.

Rolling out Ask The Workers starts usually with those suppliers where business has the most leverage.

You can also start with your own locations – for example, where labour is provided by third party agencies or sub-contractors alongside your own employees (who can also participate).

Generally, the principle to follow is to demonstrate compliance in your own locations and with key suppliers before moving on to a wider implementation. It is much easier for suppliers to accept Ask The Workers when there are examples for them to follow.

Step 2: Introduce Ask The Workers to the supplier

Ask The Workers is implemented with the consent of the supplier - so the next step is to contact the supplier.

Suppliers are quite used to their customers stipulating certain due diligence activities that must be completed as part of their business relationship. A good example would be:

• Signing up to policies and standards

• Completing supplier self-assessment questionnaires, often supported by evidence

• Submitting to a regular social audit and sharing the results

Ask The Workers is no different. Suppliers agree to introduce the app to their workforce as part of a customer's reasonable due diligence request. There are even advantages:

• There is no cost for the supplier who gets its own dashboards and no cost for workers to use the app.

• Production is not interrupted as workers are expected typically to provide feedback when they are not at work.

• Results are available in real-time and suppliers see the same data as their customers at the same time.

• Suppliers can have labour rights risks of their own which may not be visible to them, and these can also be surfaced by Ask The Workers.

• Suppliers can share data and reports with customers, demonstrating their labour rights compliance.

Workplaces can have concerns. Ask The Workers is more transparent than social audits or SAQs and workplaces can understandably worry that customers might use data provided for commercial advantage.

Reassurances are important. If workers do report findings, workplaces need to know this will not influence commercial terms or the business relationship (as long as there is an appropriate path to remedy).

Step 3: Informing the workers

Workers generally need to know three things about the app:

• Safe: It is safe to use because it is truly anonymous, there is safety in numbers (all workers can use the app all the time), and individual responses are never shared with the business

• Benefit: The data provided is used to benefit the workers, diagnosing any issues that may be present in the workplace, potentially leading to better working conditions

• Who: Data provided is shared with the business, its customers and other parties with an interest in labour rights conditions in the workplace

Anyone can download the app. It is available in the Googe Play Store and the Apple App Store.

Users can only give feedback if they have a valid location code linking them to a workplace. We provide that location code and workers need to know what it is. The location code should be published on posters or put in leaflets that workers can see. Ask The Workers provides templates in all the languages in which the app operates.

Usually a 15 minute meeting with workers either collectively or in groups is all that is required initially - since the app itself is intuitive and workers do not (in our experience) need training on how to use it. The Ask The Workers app runs in the user's language, there is no typing involved, and answers are given by swiping left or right or clicking buttons.

The key thing is to get started!

Workers may well be suspicious of the app initially. The actual working relationship between a workforce and its employer may be good, or it may be difficult – and that can be hard to understand from a distance.

Once the app is launched, data can flow immediately. And then it is quickly possible to understand better via the data how workers are viewing the app and to see whether the implementation needs to be tuned with follow up.

How quickly do I get results?

Results can emerge immediately as the app operates in real-time.

Here is an example dashboard showing how data builds over time - with filters on the right hand side that can be used in combination to dig into the data - subject always to gating if the number of responding workers becomes too low so that they are safeguarded.

What if I want to change the questions?

The app is dynamic. Questions can be changed centrally and there is no need to have any follow-up discussions with workers if questions are changed.

What about follow-up with the workers?

This is the most important process of all.

Workers will not continue to use the app if there is no benefit to them.

The app does not provide any automatic feedback to the workers. This is our choice, but we believe that it is the workplace that is the most important actor - and that feedback to workers should come from the workplace itself.

Ask The Workers requires workplaces to provide feedback to workers every month:

• This is what we hear you saying.

• This is what we plan to do about it.

We do have workplaces on our platform where feedback is pretty positive. This is not unusual - but feedback still needs to be provided. In this case workers are told that there are no issues arising which are being actioned - and if something is being missed, please do get on the app and use it next month so that we know.

How does this compare to surveys?

Every worker-engagement model will be different.

In our experience, Ask The Workers is a lower-cost and more effective model than surveys.

There are so many benefits that arise from continuous worker voice - and it is actually cheaper to implement because, once it is running, it just continues.

Continuous worker voice - easy to start

Let us know what you think about this topic. See how this post fits into the story of Worker Voice - click here for our guide to worker voice.

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)