Case Study: How Carter’s is Scaling Worker Voice Across a Global Supply Chain with the WELL Survey
- Labor Solutions
- 8 hours ago
- 3 min read
Executive Summary
As part of a strategic shift toward more effective Human Rights Due Diligence, Carter’s, Inc. moved beyond traditional compliance audits to adopt a data-driven worker voice model. By incorporating the scores from supplier worker surveys into their Vendor Scorecard, Carter’s is able to take a scalable, yet locally-tailored approach to supporting supplier standards focused on ensuring worker wellbeing and continuous improvement rather than audit and policing.
By deploying the Labor Solutions WELL (Worker Wellbeing, Engagement and Livelihoods) Survey across its global supply chain, Carter’s heard from more than 65,000 workers across 24 suppliers in five major manufacturing hubs: Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Thailand, and Cambodia.
Carter’s selected the WELL Survey for its indicator-based structure, which the company described as helping them “build a comprehensive understanding of workers’ experiences across each topic, ensuring we focus on the issues that matter most.” This deployment supports Carter’s broader Raise the Future commitment to improve the lives of one million workers by 2030.
Scope of the Initiative
Scaling Worker Voice Across Multiple Regions
The deployment was designed to capture a representative, high-volume dataset across Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers, while minimizing operational burden on factories.
Geographic Reach: Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Thailand, and Cambodia
Supplier Participation: 24 manufacturing partners
Worker Engagement: Over 65,000 anonymous responses
Methodology: Mobile-based, anonymous deployment using QR codes
Carter’s emphasized that the WELL Survey questions are “simple, easy for workers to understand, and effective at capturing the reality on the production floor.” Combined with a streamlined deployment model, the process was “quick and highly scalable, allowing us to engage key suppliers simultaneously without creating operational burden.”
Key WELL Survey Indicators
The WELL Survey’s modular design enabled Carter’s to measure 12 core dimensions of worker experience, providing what the company described as “fast, structured insights that help identify areas of risk and opportunities for improvement.”
The indicators include Access to Remedy, Fair Pay and Working Hours, Gender Equity, Responsible Recruitment, Harassment and Abuse, Occupational Health and Safety, Wellbeing, and Workplace Climate, among others. Together, these indicators move beyond surface-level compliance to capture lived worker experience across facilities, scaling worker voice in varying local contexts.
Why Carter’s Uses Worker Survey Data
Incentivizing Worker Wellbeing Beyond Audits
By adding a worker survey to their supplier engagement toolkit, Carter’s signals to suppliers that how workers experience their rights and working conditions is a key indicator of supplier performance. By aligning with suppliers before the first deployment on the objectives of the survey and what lower results than expected mean in terms of support Carter’s will provide to help suppliers improve, Carter’s creates an environment of alignment, where all supply chain parties work towards improvement instead of perfection.
Strengthening Human Rights Due Diligence
Worker survey data has become, in Carter’s words, “an important part of our Human Rights Due Diligence strategy.” The WELL Survey enables Carter’s to “validate conditions beyond traditional audits,” strengthening supplier risk assessments with direct worker input rather than relying solely on documentation and scheduled interviews.
Enabling More Meaningful Supplier Engagement
Rather than functioning as a compliance scorecard, the survey data helps Carter’s “guide more meaningful conversations with suppliers about worker well-being and responsible workplace practices.” Indicator-level results allow suppliers to identify specific gaps and implement targeted remediation actions.
By listening directly to the voices of more than 65,000 workers, Carter’s has strengthened its ability to identify risk, validate working conditions, and engage suppliers in continuous improvement. As Carter’s summarized, the WELL Survey “provides clear, reliable insights into workers’ experiences,” supporting a more effective, worker-centered approach to Human Rights Due Diligence at scale.
Turn worker voice into actionable due diligence.
The WELL Survey helps brands move beyond audits to gain clear, reliable insight into worker experience at scale. Learn how WELL can strengthen your Human Rights Due Diligence, improve supplier engagement, and surface risks that traditional tools miss.