A letter from Kolkata - why Worker Voice matters

I write this from Kolkata in India — a city of nearly 20 million people where I grew up, where I live with my family today – and where I have lived most of my life. 

From factory gates at dawn to shared transport late at night, the movement of workers defines the rhythm of the city. Migration, hierarchy, informal arrangements, and economic pressure are part of everyday working life across much of South and Southeast Asia.

For UK retailers and brands sourcing from Asia, this reality can feel distant. Yet it sits at the heart of global supply chains. Understanding how labour functions — not just how labour conditions are documented — has become central to responsible sourcing, regulatory expectations, and long-term supplier resilience.

Increasingly, brands are recognising that traditional oversight tools are not enough.

Worker voice has become essential.

The reality of labour in Asia today

Across Asia’s manufacturing and processing sectors, recent reporting continues to point to persistent, structural challenges:

• Workers often hesitate to raise concerns due to fear of retaliation or loss of future work

• Wage pressure translates into excessive overtime and fatigue

• There is little confidence that raising issues can deliver positive results

• Health, safety, and wellbeing risks are under-reported

• Workplace culture issues, including bullying or harassment, are difficult to surface through  traditional B2B due diligence systems such as social audit.

These are not historic issues. International bodies on labour rights continue to highlight concerns about worker treatment and risks of reprisals for workers that speak out, particularly in export-oriented manufacturing sectors. At the same time, programmes led by these organizations highlight that workplace culture and supervision practices remain critical risk areas that are often missed by audits alone.

What is consistent across this body of work is a simple insight:

Workers know where the problems are — but often do not feel safe or confident raising them openly – and they are rarely asked.

Traditional oversight struggles to detect issues

Most brands rely on audits, certifications, supplier self-assessments, and corrective action plans. These tools play an important role in establishing baseline standards and accountability.

However, organisations such as the Ethical Trading Initiative and the OECD have long acknowledged that audits are limited in their ability to capture lived experience — especially in environments a long way away and that have complex labour arrangements.

Audits tend to be:

• Point in time

• Document-driven

• Conducted with prior notice and management visibility

• Focused on system existence rather than system effectiveness

  
  

Audits can answer questions like:

• “Is a policy in place?”

• “Are pay rates and hours legal based on the documents provided?”

  
  

They struggle to answer:

• “Are policies implemented?”

• “Is there discrimination or harassment in the workplace?”

• “Are vulnerable demographics within the workforce experiencing issues?”

• “Are actual pay rates and hours acceptable?”

• “Do corrective actions deliver remedy?”

• “Is remedy sustained?”

• “Are things different when the auditors are not here?”

Many labour issues emerge late — through worker protests, NGO escalation, or media exposure — rather than through internal monitoring.

Worker voice matters - it is becoming central to due diligence

Recent guidance from the UK government, OECD, and international labour institutions increasingly emphasises meaningful worker engagement as a core component of responsible business conduct.

Workers are the stakeholders that need to be consulted.

This is not about replacing audits. It is about complementing them with continuous insight from workers themselves.

Worker voice, implemented with safeguarding and anonymity for workers, enables:

• Visibility of policy operation in practice (not just theory)

• Insight into issues that documents and policies cannot show

• Evidence that remedies are real and not symbolic

  
  

And if worker voice can be continuous:

• Real-time and all-the-time transparency

• Every day feedback, not just snapshots provided by infrequent and pre-advised audits

Programmes such as Better Work and IFC-backed initiatives consistently show that when workers can share feedback safely and regularly - compliance outcomes, productivity, and retention improve.

The challenge is ensuring that worker voice mechanisms are designed for the realities of Asian workplaces.

What are the key capabilities of a worker voice platform?

A recent report by the Open Supply Hub (click here) highlights key capabilities that digital tools should incorporate for maximum inclusivity and effectiveness.

These include:

• Consent-based data governance (provision of data should be voluntary)

• Design for accessibility and low-barrier use

• Low-bandwidth design

• No typing

• Off-line capability

• Guidance in local languages, including audio/visual

• Safety should be a design priority

• Rights-centric approach

• Ongoing (ie: continuous) and not one-off

• Reciprocal communication (ie: two-way – workers provide feedback to business but also need to hear back)

I spend my life working with suppliers in South Asia delivering worker voice solutions – and can only reiterate the huge importance of the points that OpenSupplyHub is making here.

Where Ask The Workers (“ATW”) fits in

ATW is a continuous, anonymous listening system that allows workers to share their experience voluntarily without being identified. Across the platforms I have seen, ATW is the one that best fits the requirements of our local markets here in South Asia.

Its design reflects what research and practice repeatedly show is necessary in Asia:

• Unsupervised and voluntary participation, because feedback should be authentic

• Continuous operation, because issues should not be missed and remedy should be sustained

• Anonymity by default, because fear of reprisals is real

• Low-friction engagement, because worker trust builds gradually

• Local language access, because nuance matters

• Pattern-based insights, because trends are more meaningful than individual complaints

For retailers and brands in the west, this provides a different kind of visibility — not snapshots, but signals over time.

From symptoms to diagnosis

One of the most consistent findings across labour research is that surface indicators can be misleading.

For example:

• High overtime may reflect economic pressure, not worker choice

• Stable production may mask fatigue or coercive supervision

  
  

Ask The Workers helps stakeholders move from symptom spotting to root-cause diagnosis by analysing patterns across time. This is why worker voice, especially continuous worker voice, matters.

By tracking trends in trust, workload, supervision behaviour, safety perception, and wellbeing, buyers in the West can identify where risk is building — and intervene earlier, before escalation.

This approach aligns with OECD due diligence guidance, which emphasises identifying, preventing, and mitigating risks through ongoing stakeholder engagement rather than reactive response.

What Stakeholders gain

For retailers and brands sourcing from Asia, Ask The Workers provides:

• Continuous visibility into worker experience

• Early detection of emerging labour risks

• Evidence of meaningful worker engagement

• Insight into whether remediation efforts are working

• A stronger foundation for responsible sourcing decisions

  
  

Rather than relying solely on periodic assessments, brands gain an ongoing understanding of how labour conditions evolve between audits.

A closing thought

Labour rights in Asia are not only about laws and policies. They are about whether workers feel safe enough to be honest.

Workers in Asian factories already know what needs improving. The challenge for global supply chains is whether they are equipped to listen — quietly, consistently, and responsibly.

Ask The Workers exists in that space: not as a substitute for audits, standards, or regulation, but as a bridge between worker reality and distant decision-makers.

For retailers and brands in the West, that bridge is no longer optional. It is foundational.

Indranil Mandal is the Regional Head for South and East Asia at ES3G Limited, the UK company that has developed and operates the Ask The Workers platform. Contact him here.