This blog is guest authored by Kohl Gill, the founder and CEO of LaborVoices, a supply-chain analytics company, and Alysia Steinmeyer, the Director of Global Business Development.

Every day, millions of workers in the global apparel industry suffer from critically unsafe working conditions in their factories, which include a lack of access to clean water, unsanitary conditions, and verbal abuse, to name a few. Bangladesh has become the international example of what can happen when worker safety standards are neglected, as reflected by the infamous Rana Plaza Factory collapse in April 2013 that killed more than 1,100 workers.

Unfortunately, improving workplace conditions is no easy task. Vulnerable workers in developing countries lack access to basic utilities at their places of work – from clean drinking water and functioning toilets, to sanitary food and cafeterias – that many of us take for granted. Despite the improvements in social compliance mechanisms over the past decade, workers still lack a reliable channel to report these conditions, and a solid means for improving transparency and accountability throughout the supply chain.

While it has proved difficult to take-on murky, Goliath-sized supply chains in the past, hand-held mobile technology is sizing up to be a powerful tool in this battle. According to GSMA, there are now 7.5 billion mobile connections with 3.7 billion unique subscribers. With 90.2 per cent of people in developing countries now owning a mobile phone, mobile technology has the potential to significantly improve the working conditions of vulnerable workers around the world (International Telecommunication Union (2014). ‘ICT Facts and Figures’).

 

 

A mobile solution to a global problem

In January 2016, six year-old Silicon Valley startup LaborVoices launched an innovative solution in Bangladesh garment factories that aims to tackle this global problem. The solution helps workers obtain clean drinking water and sanitary conditions, among other improvements in their workplace, using the main resource that they have at hand: their mobile phone. The company’s new mobile platform, SmartLine™ Symphony, is turning workers’ voices into viable choices for finding better working environments.

Symphony crowdsources information on working conditions directly from workers via their mobile phones, both inside and outside of factories, and then pushes ratings and reviews on factories back out to workers about the best employers in their area. These reviews let workers know which employers rank the worst on key utilities issues, such as dirty drinking water and unsanitary cafeterias, so that they can avoid taking jobs there. Workers can also engage with the platform to access local services, such as reputable health and maternity clinics in their vicinity, to learn about proper health and sanitation.

As LaborVoices’ Director of Global Business Development, Alysia Steinmeyer, reported on factory workers’ reviews in Bangladesh:

“The feedback we’ve received has been illuminating. While we’ve been able to highlight positive examples of factory conditions, such as workers being paid on time and trained effectively, the reality is that many workers still report sexual harassment, unsafe building conditions, and children working in their factories. Our goal is to work proactively with brands, suppliers, and factory managers to identify and correct these issues before they escalate.”

 

Furthermore, by publishing Symphony’s industry-wide factory data every 6 months, LaborVoices creates an accountability that is unprecedented in supply chains, forcing factories to better their workplace conditions and improve worker well-being, in order to compete with each other for talent and brand customers alike.

This month, these Bangladeshi workers will, for the first time ever, have free access to rankings and reviews of nearby employers from their peers in a TripAdvisor-like fashion, empowering them to find and sustain the best jobs throughout their entire working lives.
Symphony has received a very warm welcome from Bangladeshi apparel workers, with monthly user growth doubling every month. Since its January launch, Symphony is currently monitoring 1 in every 30 factories in the Bangladesh apparel sector, with data from 3000+ workers across 100+ factories in Bangladesh. LaborVoices is also aiming to bring apparel industry transparency to Turkey, China, Mexico, and Vietnam in 2017.

 

“Symphony is currently monitoring 1 in every 30 factories in the Bangladesh apparel sector with data from 3000+ workers.”

 

Thanks to the data collected and shared by the platform, unprecedented corrective actions were taken in the factories increasing, for example, bathroom cleanliness to 78 per cent. These changes led to 43 per cent less resignations and an increase of 32 per cent in worker satisfaction.

 

 

A Social Compliance Revolution

By allowing factories to compete over open social metrics, employers will be incentivised to provide safe working environments and the basic utilities of clean drinking water and sanitary conditions as a standard practice across the apparel industry. Mobile technology is the key to making factory management and brand customers more accountable to these ethical standards, and ultimately starting a industry-wide revolution of increased transparency.

All workers should have access to decent working conditions. With the right information in-hand, they will vote with their feet for better jobs. It’s time to offer workers a real choice.

You can learn more about this platform at www.laborvoices.com.