Continuous worker voice and workplaces (and suppliers)

When we were designing Ask The Workers, we had to make a decision about how to involve the workplaces where workers may be working.

Ask The Workers is only deployed today in workplaces which agree to their workers providing feedback via the Ask The Workers app.

Workplaces are involved:

• for authenticity, as we need to ensure that workers provide feedback on a place where they actually work; and

• because remedy is typically delivered locally - so this is where feedback from the workers first needs to be shared.

Context: what workplaces are we talking about?

Supply-chain based situations are relatively obvious - factories, farms, mines and fields that provide goods which are supplied to businesses.

Here are some examples which sit in a business' own operations:

• A construction business operates building sites, and most of the work is being done by sub-contractors and casual labour.

• A manager of shopping centres uses third party contractors for cleaning, maintenance, security and construction work.

• A delivery company hires workers on a self-employed basis to carry out delivery work, noting that workers have the right to substitute someone in their place at their option.

• A farm uses seasonal migrant workers that are supplied by a labour provider which has taken care of the recruitment and visa processes and also provides accommodation.

• Food processing businesses using agency workers

In all these situations, business should be concerned about its reliance on workers that it does not employ. Who are they? Are they being paid in line with the law? Are their working environments safe? Are they subject to control, discrimination or harassment? etc.

Any business that benefits when workers rights are not respected, even if this is happening in other organisations, has the potential for liability and reputational damage.

Why continuous worker voice (Ask The Workers) makes sense for workplaces?

Obtaining real-time, continuous worker feedback on labour conditions enables workplaces to demonstrate their confidence in how they manage workers to their customers and the wider community.

This is true whether the workplace being monitored is part of a business' own operations or is a workplace in its supply chains.

Ask The Workers is only there to check that workers are legally employed and that key policies are implemented in practice

Ask The Workers enables:

• a workplace to manage its own legal and reputational risks in relation to workers in its operations;

• and by sharing feedback from its workers it:

  • enables customers to manage their own compliance responsibilities better, avoiding regulatory issues and enabling customers to comply with existing and ermering legislation relating to forced labour and ethical employment practices

  • increases the value of the products being supplied

  • secures the supplier's access to markets by demonstrating compliance with customer codes of conduct

  • expands the universe of customers that can be served

  • supports strong credentials and powerful marketing messages

  • reduces other forms of compliance oversight, cutting down on audits and worker surveys that can interrupt production and distract management

    
    

Workplaces have direct risks that Ask The Workers helps them to assess

There are many vectors for labour rights risks and workplaces have legal and reputational responsibility for workers that are working in their locations.

Not all of the risks may be visible to the workplace itself.

There are many different contexts here set out above - both location-based and supply-chain-based. This is a general set of points that will not apply in every situation:

• The business may be using sub-contractors, agency workers, casual labour, migrant workers and may out-source some of their work. Who are these workers and are they being employed legally and in compliance with policy?

  
  

• Recruitment journeys are not always fully visible - meaning workers may be subject to control, costs or restrictions that are hidden from the employer

  
  

• Accommodation can be a source of risk; workers may be controlled or face significant deductions from wages, harassment or other challenges via their accommodation provider and this can be happening away from the sight of the employer itself

  
  

• Substitution may be occuring where the worker on site is not the same person who was originally employed; this can happen when workers are self-employed or casually employed by the business - and then the question becomes whether a substitute worker is being properly treated

  
  

• Discrimination and harassment may be practiced within the business at the operational level where workers are afraid to speak out

Ask The Workers enables workplaces to understand better the vectors of risk which may be affecting their workforces.

Continuous worker voice – quick reminder

The Ask The Workers platform is simple and it covers all-the-workers, all-the-time at a workplace (either in their own operations or at suppliers).

• Workers download our app from the Play Store or App Store.

• They register with the app by linking themselves to the place where they work.

• They use the app to tell us how they are being treated, so we can tell you.

  
  

Our registration process is simple, relying on a location code that we generate and which the is displayed in the place of work – eg: in a factory, at a farm, in a mine or even on a vessel at sea.

In this way, we can link workers authentically to a working location without knowing the worker's identity. That means no names, emails or phone numbers are required.

Workers can use the app anywhere and anytime, and it takes about a minute for them to cycle through 10 questions that our app randomly pulls from a larger panel that we maintain.

Because all the workers can answer, all the questions are usually answered 10, 20, 30 even 40 times every day.

Ask The Workers is not a survey. Workers provide feedback every day. Customers get real-time feedback on working conditions, direct from the workers, all-the-time.

What due diligence happens now?

Supply chains: today, most suppliers probably experience periodic, self-arranged audits and provide self-assessment questionnaires to their customers. it is relatively easy for suppliers to control these processes and ensure the messaging that flows from their use is not problematic.

Own operations: many companies have a blind spot in this area and simply trust the companies that are providing labour and services to them, validating compliance via self-assessment.

With continuous worker voice, workers become directly connected to outside customers in real-time.

Customers are able to understand directly from workers how they feel about their working conditions, revealing findings in real-time and then whether any remedies are delivered, effective and sustained.

Legal and ethical compliance

The Ask The Workers platform is set up only to ask questions about legal and ethical compliance.

Most suppliers will have already confirmed their compliance with appropriate policies via audits and by answering questionnaires.

Ask The Workers exists only to establish how well suppliers are implementing their policies.

The questions in Ask The Workers focus on minimum legal and ethical standards, codified by the ILO and mapped by us to the ETI base codes.

We are not asking if workers are happy.

This is not a fishing expedition.

Ask The Workers is only used to see if minimum legal standards are in place, as already confirmed by the supplier and in compliance with applicable laws.

And this the starting point and where responsible suppliers should get comfortable.

Being able to demonstrate to customers that labour rights policies are implemented and that they comply with the law are big wins when it comes to presenting their business.

Collect once, share many times

The Ask The Workers platform is based on the principle that data is collected once and shared many times.

It is easy for suppliers to use Ask The Workers data with their customers.

Once workers are using the app, data flows and it is super-easy for suppliers to share worker feedback with their customers. Simply invite customers to view the supplier dashboard where real-time results flow in every day. There are no restrictions on how many customers can be invited to see the data.

Audit and survey fatigue

Many suppliers are suffering from too many interventions by customers that overlap and duplicate questions and findings.

Implementing continuous worker voice enables suppliers to push back. The feedback collected from workers is continuous, which means the reporting cycles of customers can always be met, and the feedback is comprehensive and mapped to ETI base codes – so immediately useful for customers.

What if the supplier wants to stop sharing worker feedback?

We continue to debate this point here and with our customers, but we have designed the Ask The Workers platform so that suppliers can decide to stop the continuous flow of worker feedback to their customers anytime they choose.

Workers can continue to provide feedback to the workplace itself - since workers can do this at any time - it is just that the feedback is not shared further.

As stated above, the supplier does have to be on-board as the supplier has to facilitate remedy if there are findings that need to be addressed. This is not a fishing expedition.

But no Ask The Worker's site has ever chosen to “go dark”.

Why give suppliers the right to "go dark"?

Suppliers worry that the feedback from workers might be negative and might cause problems with their commercial arrangements. In our experience, they do need to feel that they are not handing control over this part of their narrative to their workers without an ability to intervene.

Of course, if a supplier “goes dark” by stopping feedback from workers flowing to customers, this is a warning signal that customers will quickly respond to – and the Ask The Workers platform will also notify workers that feedback is no longer being shared beyond the supplier.

As mentioned above, we continue to debate this point – but this seems to be the right way to ensure supplier's can be comfortable sharing data provided by their workers.

What do we tell workers?

Today, we do not share worker feedback via the app with the workers.

We believe that good industrial relations are created by meaningful dialogue between an employer and its workers.

Ask The Workers organically provides the platform to promote this by creating data flow from workers to their employer. When workers report conditions and/or behaviour that fall below policy or senior management expectations then dialogue can be established. Workers will report satisfaction about any remedy as part of a continuous feedback loop. Since worker feedback is monitored by the buyer, worker sentiment is always visible to the value chain and this automatically encourages good conduct.

As a result, we largely rely on the workplace to communicate with its workers, noting that customers with leverage can encourage and ensure that this happens.

This is a position that we might change in the future, but today, our position is based on the principles that:

• We do not want suppliers to worry that workers may become mobilised behind feedback that is given and that this may lead to difficulties.

  
  

• We want individuals to provide their individual feedback and not be influenced by what others are saying on the app.

This means that the workplace ultimately controls the narrative with its workers.

This is not ideal because it is important that workers understand what their feedback is being used for, and also that, if issues are being raised, they will be appropriately responded to. Continuous worker voice is a two-way process. It is not just workers telling us what is going on - there needs to be a response.

Every implementation of Ask The Workers has to address how feedback will be shared with workers and we expect that workplaces will formally commit to do this as part of the process.

What do suppliers do about worker feedback?

Most suppliers welcome feedback from their workers – and the feedback should not be a surprise.

Most suppliers will already have a good idea of what workers might think; they will also already know which areas of their operations are stretching their workforces – eg: with long hours or where work is arduous.

We have evidence in our data that suppliers are already self-correcting when issues are raised – without waiting for customers to intervene.

Self-correction is exactly what should be happening

And suppliers should also formally agree with their customers that they will formally respond to feedback from workers and cooperate with remedy design and delivery should findings indicate that this is required.

What are customers going to do with the feedback?

The main worry for suppliers relates to how the customer will respond to worker feedback that it sees.

Feedback is likely to reveal that working life is not perfect. It rarely is.

It might also reveal that social audits have not picked up issues that workers are raising.

Suppliers have probably had an easy ride with social audits and SAQs. They have been able to control the narrative and ensure their own workforce issues are hidden away from customers. Continuous worker voice exposes the reality.

Customers need to reassure suppliers that they will respond responsibly to the worker feedback that they will see. Suppliers should not lose business because of the transparency that continuous worker voice can provide. Business will be lost if findings are not followed up appropriately.

So this is the most important point. If customers can show they will respond positively and responsibly, suppliers will be ready to accept a greater level of authenticity and transparency.

What about discontented workers?

A key worry for suppliers is that continuous worker voice can put “workers in charge”.

And what if the workforce has a cohort of discontented workers or trouble-makers. Can they cause trouble with customers unnecessarily?

Ask The Workers can detect this.

There are sophisticated anti-coaching measures built into the platform that can detect artificial response patterns.

If workers are deliberately low-balling their answers to create trouble, this is easy to see in the data and users can filter out this noise.

In fact, it works both ways – workers that are continually giving exceptional grades to a workplace are also easy to detect.

It is all done in the way we collect the data and the statistical models that run in the background.

We are looking for that authentic feedback – and we have the tools and data to understand where artificial response patterns are being generated that do not likely reflect the reality on the ground.

How much do suppliers pay?

Ask The Workers is free for suppliers and free for workers.

What about suppliers themselves – is the feedback useful?

As mentioned already, the feedback given by workers should not be surprising to the supplier itself. Most suppliers will know where the issues are in their workforces.

But suppliers have found the data to be surprisingly valuable:

• Confirming their understanding of their workplace environment

• Enabling them to diagnose better root causes for any findings

• Validating whether remedies are effective and sustained

  
  

Most suppliers are keen to provide the best working conditions that they can, given their circumstances and the economic pressures that they are under.

And sometimes, labour rights abuses can be triggered by the customer –requiring prices that are too low or putting pressure on delivery dates. Worker feedback is real-time.

If this happens, it puts power in the hands of the supplier to get customers to behave more responsibly going forward.

The customer-supplier relationship is always complicated and often unequal. And we all understand the implications of that. Many labour rights abuses result from purchasing practices that leave suppliers with no choice but to take shortcuts.

More transparency can even up that relationship.

For customers, that’s ensuring the products they receive are not built on the backs of workers whose rights are abused.

For suppliers, it is providing better feedback to customers on their own realities – and putting more balance into those commercial negotiations.

Customers introduce us

We normally work with suppliers because customers have introduced us to them.

As part of that process, we encourage customers and suppliers to talk frankly about real-time, continuous worker feedback and what will be done about any findings that arise. This helps to make sure that suppliers are comfortable to implement Ask The Workers and to share findings with customers.

Suppliers can contact us directly

We can work directly with suppliers who are looking for better ways to promote their credentials, and who are looking for leverage to use with customers that can improve their commercial contracts.

There is an important principle at work here though – which is that we generally do not work with suppliers where no customers are involved. That’s to ensure worker feedback is likely to be actioned appropriately.

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)