2021 was a year of unprecedented growth for Labor Solutions: building powerful new partnerships and engaging, connecting, and educating more workers, suppliers, and brands than ever before. Labor Solutions now actively serves over 1,500,000 workers in 23 countries and 24 languages.
Labor Solutions’ core focus in 2021 was supporting workers and helping build resiliency throughout the supply chain despite the ongoing pandemic. During the pandemic we’ve seen Labor Solutions’ tools emerge as critical to recovery.
Brands, suppliers and workers alike have underscored the importance of tech-based communication tools during these uncertain times, “WOVO has become our primary communication channel and made great contribution to our efforts in preventing COVID transmission at workplace and improving workers’ health and safety” expressed by a Vietnamese factory.
Supporting Companies to Meet New Legal Requirements
2021 has also been a landmark year for mandatory corporate due diligence legislation. Read how Labor Solutions is supporting clients to meet new legal requirements at scale.
Communicating with Workers—Improving Worker Safety and Engagement and creating “sizable economic returns” for clients.
An academic study conducted by professors at the University of Michigan and the University of Hawaii at Manoa found giving workers a voice, through WOVO by enabling direct communication of grievances and concerns with employers impacts the bottom line.
“Our research shows firms have a clear incentive to invest in amplifying workers’ voices via these technologies that goes beyond public perception and marketing value; such investments have sizable economic returns by reducing costly worker turnover and absenteeism."
Here are some examples of how companies improved their bottom line by using Labor Solutions tools over the past year;
Companies using WOVO throughout COVID have seen demonstrative results; workers were able to work more productively, receive vaccines quicker and companies were able to ensure safety more efficiently.
After discovering through a survey workers were concerned about sexual harassment and general safety, a client in China worked with Labor Solutions to improve the safety and security of female workers. The factory implemented WOVO Connect to allow workers to report issues anonymously and immediately. Then using the data from Connect and worker surveys the made key changes. In the subsequent survey, they found female workers felt safer.
A Vietnamese factory used WOVO to focus on and address nutrition and increased productivity by 15% .
Read how one factory reduced turnover by 30% by proactively communicating with workers and quickly addressing concerns. Within the first six months of implementation, managers have already noticed a visible change in their ability to understand the needs of their employees.
One Cambodia factory used WOVO to prevent a strike. Due to the changes in the minimum wage by the local government, management used WOVO to interact with anxious workers regarding any questions and updates, building a culture of communication and trust.
Expanding eLearning— More Content + Partners, Better User Interface
The pandemic helped to supercharge the growth of our eLearning tools, including an improved user-interface to support workers with low-literacy levels and a lack of access to data and WiFi. It also helped to facilitate key partnerships with leading organizations who can no longer consistently and reliably visit factories and other suppliers and so instead need to rely on technology to reach and train management and workers.
Kindling and Labor Solutions formed a collaboration to implement fire safety eLearning and reduce safety accidents in the workplace.
Better Work and Labor Solutions launched a set of curricula designed to help workers better understand their rights.
Winrock and Labor Solutions partnered to prevent human trafficking in Cambodia.
IOM partnered with Labor Solutions to design a labor migration and responsible business eLearning course, to support businesses uphold the human rights of migrant workers and address the risks of trafficking and forced labor.
IDH and Labor Solutions partnered for Gender Awareness and Gender-Based Violence and Harassment Curricula.
Several brands and factories also collaborated with Labor Solutions to develop customized digital trainings.
These partnerships led to over 400,000 new eLearning users in 11 countries in one month and resulted in big outcomes, like:
An apparel brand who exceeded its 3-year training goal of having 25% of workers trained on safety and gender-based violence in less than a year.
A footwear company in China used WOVO eLearning to reduce fire safety accidents and saw a 55% increase in fire safety reports and 80% decrease in fire safety accidents.
Impact at Scale - Expanding Our Reach
On behalf of adidas, Labor Solutions deployed a worker pulse survey to 350,000 workers in 125 factories in 17 countries and languages at once. adidas was able to collect nearly 70,000 responses from workers.
Through Labor Solutions’ worker survey, a brand collected 30,000 responses in merely 48 hours in Vietnam to better understand workers’ needs, safety and access to vaccines.
We’ve also grown our Client Advisory team to better support clients in Europe and Latin America and now support clients implementing Mexico’s Nom-35.
Nike’s annual FY2020 Impact Report mentioned Labor Solutions as an influential partner in strengthening the resiliency and capability of its supply chain.
Labor Solutions featured in EPIC Groups Sustainability Report.
Labor Solutions continues to be a thought leader on worker engagement and dialogue. In 2021, Labor Solutions conducted more client advisory hours than any year to date and added key team members to help expand our knowledge base and reach.
2021 has been a year full of growth, creativity and impact.
We are thankful to our team, clients, partners and users for making 2021 the best year yet and look forward to 2022.