The most common question we hear from sustainability directors is not 'should we do this' — it is 'how do I convince everyone else we should do this.' The business case for worker engagement has to work at multiple levels simultaneously: legal and compliance teams worried about regulatory exposure, procurement teams focused on supplier relationships and cost, boards focused on reputational risk and investor disclosure, and sustainability teams needing to demonstrate genuine impact, not box-checking . Key Takeaways CSDDD and LkSG require worker engagement — not audits. Non-compliance carries fines of up to 5% of global net turnover; directors can be held personally liable. 35% of audit-passing sites have serious risks. Brands with audit-only data do not know what is actually happening in their value chain. Suppliers who engage actively with the WOVO platform see a 1:3 return on investment, alongside a 44% reduction in absenteeism and 33% improvement in retention. adidas deploys WOVO across 402,500 workers — worker satisfaction rose from 39% to 79% over five years. That is board-level evidence. ESRS S2 requires mandatory public reporting on worker engagement and grievance mechanism effectiveness. The regulatory case: the law requires worker engagement, not audits CSDDD , LkSG , and France’s Duty of Vigilance Law do not require audits. They require worker participation , stakeholder engagement, and access to remedy. Most companies built their human rights due diligence infrastructure around audits by industry habit. The legislation was built around workers. CSDDD requires companies to establish or participate in operational-level grievance mechanisms for value chain workers, conduct ongoing human rights risk assessments based on direct worker engagement , and produce documented evidence of risk identification, remediation, and outcomes. LkSG is already in force. Non-compliance under CSDDD carries fines of up to 5% of global net turnover. Directors can be held personally liable. The risk management case: audits leave you exposed 35% of audit-passing sites have been found to have serious risks when value chain workers are given a safe, anonymous channel via the WELL Worker Survey . The risks that produce reputational crises — forced labor, illegal recruitment fees, wage theft, harassment — are almost never the risks that appear on audit reports. A brand that has only audit data is a brand that does not know what is actually happening in its value chain. The supplier case: worker engagement produces operational outcomes Suppliers who engage actively with the WOVO platform see a 1:3 return on investment . Documented outcomes include a 44% reduction in absenteeism and 33% improvement in worker retention — which translate directly into lower recruitment costs, higher productivity, and more stable supplier relationships. Factories with low worker trust have higher turnover, more grievances that escalate, and more exposure to the kind of incident that ends a sourcing relationship. The board and investor case: evidence of process, not just intent ESRS S2 — the social standards under the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive — requires companies to report publicly on their approach to worker engagement across their value chain, including the grievance mechanisms in place and evidence of their effectiveness. Board-level disclosure on human rights due diligence is no longer voluntary. adidas cites WOVO in their 2024 Annual Report as the foundation of worker engagement across 400,000 workers in 100% of strategic Tier 1 suppliers. Worker satisfaction rose from 39% to 79% over five years. Read the adidas case study for the full evidence base. What to say to people who are not yet convinced For legal and compliance: ‘Our current audit approach does not satisfy the CSDDD grievance mechanism requirement. We need to demonstrate that value chain workers have access to a remedy process that works.’ For procurement: ‘This reduces the risk of a sourcing crisis. Factories with worker engagement infrastructure are more stable. Here is the ROI evidence.’ For finance: ‘The cost of non-compliance under CSDDD is up to 5% of global net turnover. The cost of implementation is a fraction of that.’ For the board: ‘Our investors are asking about this. Our reporting obligations require evidence of it. Here is the program that provides it.’ Human rights is a practice, not a project. The sooner the infrastructure is in place, the more evidence accumulates — and the stronger the position when it is tested. Contact us to discuss how WOVO can meet your specific CSDDD and LkSG obligations. Frequently Asked Questions What is the ROI of worker engagement for suppliers? Suppliers who engage actively with the WOVO platform see a 1:3 return on investment, alongside a 44% reduction in absenteeism and 33% improvement in worker retention. These outcomes reflect lower recruitment and training costs, higher productivity, and more stable production. What are the penalties for non-compliance under CSDDD? Non-compliance with CSDDD carries fines of up to 5% of global net turnover. Directors can be held personally liable. The question for legal and compliance teams is not whether to implement worker engagement, but whether the implementation satisfies what the law actually requires. What evidence do boards and investors need on supply chain human rights due diligence? ESRS S2 requires companies to report publicly on their approach to worker engagement across their value chain, including the grievance mechanisms in place and evidence of their effectiveness. Board-level disclosure requirements mean this is no longer a sustainability team issue. adidas cites WOVO in their 2024 Annual Report as the foundation of worker engagement across 402,500 workers in 100% of Tier 1 suppliers. How do I make the business case for worker engagement to my procurement team? The argument that lands with procurement is operational, not regulatory: factories with worker engagement infrastructure have lower turnover, fewer grievances that escalate into crises, and more stable production schedules. The 1:3 ROI figure and documented reductions in absenteeism and retention are supplier outcomes — not brand talking points. Present the evidence to operations and finance, not just the CSR contact.

A Labor Solutions Analysis | MIT Research, Nelson & Wilmers (2025) Worker voice drives productivity. Not symbolically — measurably. New causal evidence from MIT shows that when manufacturers actively integrate worker input into production decisions, output rises by up to 15%, earnings increase, and turnover falls. For brands under CSDDD and human rights due diligence obligations, this is not a social outcome. It is a value chain capability. Key Takeaways Active worker voice is associated with productivity gains of up to 15% (Nelson & Wilmers, 2025, Table 3) Wage and retention effects persist even after controlling for productivity — indicating a genuine shift in worker bargaining power, not just an output effect Zero grievances at a supplier is not a safety signal. It is usually a sign the system is not trusted or accessible CSDDD requires evidence of grievance mechanism effectiveness — not just existence. Worker-generated data is the only way to provide that evidence The adidas WOVO programme — 402,500 workers, 47,200 grievances, 99% resolution, 79% satisfaction — is the published proof of what a functioning system produces at scale Worker Voice Produces Measurable Business Outcomes — Not Just Compliance Data Dylan Nelson and Nathan Wilmers at MIT have produced something rare in the labor space: causal evidence. Their study, Earnings Effects of Direct Worker Voice in Production (May 2025), examines what happens when manufacturers move from low to high use of worker input in production decisions. The findings are not subtle. Moving from low to high use of worker input is associated with productivity gains of up to 15% (Table 3, pp. 19–20). Earnings increase. Turnover decreases. These are not correlation findings — the study uses quasi-experimental methodology to isolate the effect. For brands, the downstream implication is direct. Factories that perform better produce more reliably: fewer last-minute production crises, more stable output, better absorption of demand volatility. When factories run more smoothly, downstream partners feel it. This is what Labor Solutions has measured in the adidas WOVO programme for eight years. Worker satisfaction at adidas Tier 1 facilities rose from 39% in 2019 to 79% in 2025 — a 40-point gain built through consistent programme investment, not a one-time survey cycle. The Distinction That Matters: Using Worker Input, Not Just Collecting It Nelson & Wilmers make a finding that should change how every brand evaluates its worker voice programme. It is not the existence of a mechanism that drives performance gains — it is whether worker input is actively used in decisions. Many programmes do the first. Very few do the second. Workers speak. Responses are logged. A PDF is produced at the end of a cycle. Nothing changes. A grievance mechanism that is not trusted, not used, and not acted upon is not a compliance asset — it is a liability, because CSDDD Article 9 requires evidence of effectiveness, not just existence. Are workers' insights shaping decisions — or just filling reports? The adidas WOVO programme demonstrates what an effective system looks like in practice. In 2025, 47,200 grievances were submitted by workers across 92 facilities — a 32% increase from 35,700 in 2024. The 99% resolution rate was maintained for the fourth consecutive year. Rising volume alongside a sustained resolution rate is not a problem. It is proof that workers trust the system enough to use it. Zero Grievances Is Not a Safety Signal — It Is Usually a Sign of a Broken System One of the most persistent misconceptions in human rights due diligence is that silence is good news. It is not. Zero grievances at a supplier almost always means one of three things: workers do not know the mechanism exists, they do not trust it, or they have learned from experience that speaking up carries risk. The MIT study reinforces why this matters. The earnings and retention effects it documents persist even after controlling for productivity — meaning the benefit of worker voice is not simply that workers produce more and therefore earn more. It reflects a structural shift in how knowledge and influence are distributed at the facility level. Workers whose input shapes decisions become indispensable contributors. That indispensability shows up in wages and in retention. A programme that workers do not trust cannot produce this effect. Which is why consistent usage, rising volume, and sustained resolution rates are not just a headline — they are evidence of a programme that workers have decided to rely on. Frontline Workers See What Audits Cannot — and They See It First Audits document the past. Workers report the present. Frontline workers are typically the first to notice deteriorating conditions, abusive supervision, wage inconsistencies, safety shortcuts, and the kind of operational friction that becomes a quality or compliance incident months later. The WELL Worker Survey's electronics sector case study found that 35% of suppliers who passed their most recent social audit had workers paying illegal recruitment fees. Seventy-three percent of workers in the same cohort had low rights awareness — none of it visible to auditors. Audits check systems. Workers experience them. When worker feedback is integrated into operational decisions — not logged and filed — those signals are captured early, interpreted in context, and acted on before they become non-compliances. That is real-time risk mitigation. It is also, as the MIT study shows, associated with measurably better facility performance. Worker Voice Is a Value Chain Capability. Here Is What That Requires. The Nelson & Wilmers study gives empirical backing to what practitioners in this field have observed for years: when worker voice is real, factories perform better and workers do better. For brands, that means worker voice belongs in sourcing strategy, risk management, HRDD and CSDDD reporting, and supplier selection criteria — not in a CSR workstream that sits beside the business. If you are: Building or assessing a worker survey programme — the WELL Worker Survey generates primary data directly from value chain workers, surfacing root causes that audits cannot see. Learn about WELL. Looking for an operational grievance mechanism that workers actually use — WOVO CONNECT is an always-on, in-app mechanism that workers can access anonymously, with structured case management for suppliers and live dashboards for buyers. It is not a hotline. Learn about WOVO CONNECT. Working to turn worker feedback into supplier-owned action plans — WOVO IMPROVE translates findings into structured, trackable improvement plans that suppliers own rather than manage. Learn about WOVO IMPROVE. Ready to build the full programme — get in touch . We are happy to continue the conversation. All findings from the MIT study cited in this post are drawn from Nelson, D. & Wilmers, N. (2025), "Earnings Effects of Direct Worker Voice in Production," ILR Review (May 2025). All adidas programme data is drawn from adidas' publicly available annual sustainability reports 2019–2025. Labor Solutions is the provider of the WOVO platform deployed across adidas' Tier 1 value chain. Further Reading Worker Grievances Up 32% — Here's Why That's adidas' Biggest WOVO Milestone Yet What Is Worker Voice — and Why Audits Can't Replace It Operational Grievance Mechanisms: What Buyers Should Look For Worker-Driven Due Diligence vs EcoVadis Worker Voice Connect: What Brands Need to Know Frequently Asked Questions Does the MIT research apply to value chains specifically? Nelson & Wilmers (2025) studied manufacturing facilities — the same operational context as most Tier 1 and Tier 2 value chain suppliers for fashion, electronics, and consumer goods brands. The productivity, earnings, and retention effects documented are directly relevant to the supplier facilities where brands have the most leverage and the most compliance exposure. What is the difference between having a worker voice tool and actually using worker voice? The MIT study is explicit: it is the active use of worker input in decisions — not the existence of a mechanism — that produces the performance effects. A survey that generates a report no one acts on does not qualify. An always-on grievance mechanism with consistent annual usage, 99% resolution, and rising year-on-year volume — like the adidas WOVO deployment — does. How does this research connect to CSDDD compliance requirements? CSDDD Article 9 requires companies to establish or participate in effective grievance mechanisms and demonstrate their effectiveness through usage data, resolution rates, and worker satisfaction — reported under ESRS S2. The MIT study provides independent academic evidence for why this matters operationally, not just legally: a functioning worker voice system produces measurable business performance, not just a compliance paper trail.

For the past two decades, the dominant response to human rights risks in global value chains has been the social compliance audit. A team of auditors visits a facility, reviews documentation, interviews a handful of workers, and produces a report. The factory passes or fails. If it passes, brands assume compliance. The problem is not that audits are badly done. Audits serve a legitimate purpose for specific things — physical facility conditions, building safety, policy existence. But they were never designed to tell you what workers actually experience. And the law never asked them to. Most companies built their human rights due diligence infrastructure around audits by industry habit. The legislation — CSDDD, LkSG, France's Duty of Vigilance Law — was built around something else entirely: direct worker participation, stakeholder engagement, and access to remedy. Worker voice is not the thing you add after you have done your audits. It is what the law requires. Worker Voice Is Not a Survey Three Conditions, Not One Tool Worker voice is a worker's ability to influence the conditions of their own working life. Not to be surveyed. Not to be consulted. Not to have a phone number they can call. Not to have a box they can drop a note in. To influence outcomes. That requires three things to be true simultaneously: workers can speak, workers are heard, and something changes as a result. Remove any one and what remains is not voice — it is data extraction dressed as participation. A survey with no visible follow-through is data extraction. A grievance hotline no one trusts is data extraction. Rights education with no channel to act on it is awareness theater. Why the Legal Bar Is Higher Than Most Programs Meet This distinction matters legally. CSDDD does not require companies to collect worker data. It requires worker participation and access to remedy — a meaningfully higher bar that most audit-era compliance programs do not meet. It matters practically too, because workers know the difference. Workers who raise concerns and see nothing change learn not to raise concerns. Workers surveyed through a process they associate with factory management answer in ways they think are safe. The data looks clean. The risk remains. Measurement Without Employer Response Is Not Worker Voice Worker voice is only real when someone who can make change is an engaged and willing participant. In most cases that is the direct employer — the supplier, the factory manager, the HR director. Government, brand, and multistakeholder initiative mechanisms are important, but a last resort. Employer-employee dialogue is the foundation of a healthy, low-risk workplace — not external enforcement. Change is possible where employers are willing to listen, engage, understand, and act. The WELL Worker Survey  is always accompanied by WOVO IMPROVE  — a supplier self-diagnostic tool, not an externally imposed corrective action plan. Suppliers use it to understand the root causes behind what workers reported, then build their own action plans limited to three priorities at a time. The process is owned by the supplier because change has to be owned by the employer to last. Two continuous mechanisms support this cycle: an always-on operational grievance channel workers can use between annual survey cycles (like WOVO CONNECT ) , and rights-based education to ensure workers know their rights (like WOVO Educate ), which results in workers being more likely to raise concerns directly with their employer . The goal is not escalation. The goal is a workplace where workers and employers communicate well enough that escalation is rarely necessary. What Social Compliance Audits Miss — and Why A Pattern, Not an Exception The gap between what social compliance audits find and what workers experience is structural, not incidental. Audits are point-in-time assessments conducted by outsiders asking questions workers have every reason to answer carefully. This is not an isolated failure. A 2023 New York Times investigation  documented it in detail because it happened to involve recognizable US brands — but the pattern is routine. Auditors reviewed 20 production facilities. Child labor violations were missed at every single one. Children worked the night shift. Auditors arrived in the morning. These failures happen daily across value chains worldwide. The Times investigation named them. Most go unnamed. The Question Your Own Audit Results Should Prompt Consider your own audit results. What proportion come back non-compliant? In industries and regions with documented, well-researched labor risks — recruitment fees, excessive overtime, restricted movement — a system that consistently returns clean results is not evidence that conditions are good. It is evidence that the tool cannot see what is there. Brands that describe audits as "the bare minimum" or "basic compliance" should ask what compliance, exactly, is being measured — and whether the volume of non-findings is a credible reflection of reality in the facilities they source from. What Worker-Led Data Finds Instead The WELL Worker Survey  finds serious gaps where audits find none. In documented deployments, 35% of audit-passing sites  have been found to carry serious risks — illegal recruitment fees, wage theft, harassment, safety violations — when workers are given a safe, anonymous channel to share their actual experiences. These are facilities that cleared social compliance review. Workers knew. The audit did not ask. The WELL Survey did. The Audit Model Is Not Improving — the Data Confirms It Thirty Years, Zero Movement According to a Deloitte analysis , fewer than 10% of suppliers are audited under the analogue approach in any given period. Of the audits that do take place, more than 50% are falsified as a direct result of punitive audit strategies. And across a seven-year period of sustained audit activity, the industry has seen 0% improvement in the underlying issues being measured ( Sourcing Journal, October 2020 ). The Legislation Never Asked for Audits What CSDDD and LkSG Actually Require Here is what most companies have not fully absorbed: CSDDD, LkSG, and France's Duty of Vigilance Law do not require audits. They require worker participation, stakeholder engagement, and access to remedy. What the law has always asked for is direct engagement with workers as rightholders. CSDDD Article 9 requires operational-level grievance mechanisms accessible to value chain workers. LkSG requires a complaints procedure that workers throughout the value chain can access. Most companies built their human rights due diligence infrastructure around auditors. The legislation was built around workers. A System Suppliers Own, Not a Programme Brands Impose The Labor Solutions methodology begins with supplier engagement, not supplier inspection. Worker voice only generates honest data when suppliers understand why the programme exists, see the operational benefit of participating, and own the action plans that follow. A cycle that brands impose and suppliers manage defensively produces the same result as the audit it replaces — clean-looking data that reflects what suppliers want brands to see. The model that works is continuous: workers share their experiences, suppliers act on what they hear, brands verify through longitudinal data rather than point-in-time visits. That cycle has to be owned at the supplier level to function. WOVO IMPROVE  is built around that principle — supplier self-assessment, supplier-led action plans, three priorities at a time, visible maturity progression over multiple cycles. WOVO is trusted by adidas (402,500 workers, 92 facilities, 100% Tier 1 coverage), Carter's, Nike, H&M, Diageo, Puma, Decathlon, and others across fashion, food & beverage, and technology. The adidas case study  documents eight years of outcomes. The Carter's case study  shows what scaled deployment looks like across a North American value chain. Contact us  to discuss yours. Workers First. Always.

If you've run worker surveys before and walked away wondering what to do with the results, you're not alone. That gap between data and action defined the first decade of worker voice technology across the industry. Brands had reports they couldn't act on. Suppliers felt measured, not supported. Workers answered surveys and never saw anything change — which, over time, eroded the trust that makes worker voice work at all. The problem wasn't the surveys. That's the context you need to evaluate any worker voice platform today. What worker voice technology actually is — and what it isn't Worker voice technology gives workers in global value chains a direct, anonymous channel to report conditions, raise concerns, and respond to surveys — independent of management. Done well, it surfaces what audits cannot: the gap between documented policy and lived experience on the factory floor. But worker voice is not the same as worker-driven due diligence. The distinction matters enormously for HRDD. Worker-driven due diligence means the entire process — from risk identification to remediation — is structured around what workers actually report. Audits assess what's been built: systems, policies, procedures. Worker surveys verify whether those systems are working for the people inside them. And a structured action framework — built on what workers said — drives improvement. That full loop is what CSDDD and the UN Guiding Principles require. How the industry got here — and where it got stuck The early days of worker voice were genuinely exciting. Mobile phones made it possible to hear directly from workers in factories and farms that had previously been impossible to reach at scale. The question the industry — Labor Solutions included — was focused on was: how do we get to workers, and what should we ask them? That was the right question to start with. Survey design, language access, anonymity, delivery — these are hard problems, and solving them opened up a genuinely new source of information about conditions in global value chains. What the industry hadn't yet figured out was what to do with the data once it arrived. There was no standard framework for turning findings into action. Brands received reports. Suppliers received scores. The question of what happened next — who was responsible, what the priority should be, how progress would be tracked — was largely left unanswered. That gap is where worker voice programs stalled, and where worker trust began to erode. Where Labor Solutions started — and why it matters Labor Solutions was founded as a human resources company, working directly inside factories with human resources managers, worker welfare officers, and production supervisors. That origin shaped everything — not just what the technology does, but what problem it was designed to solve. When you start from the factory floor, you understand that a survey finding is only useful if the supplier knows what to do with it. You understand that workers won't trust a grievance channel that management controls. You understand that anonymity isn't a feature — it's the foundation of everything. Ulula's founders built a credible, purpose-built worker voice tool and brought genuine expertise to the space. But Ulula was built from a compliance and technology starting point. Those are different design philosophies, and they produce different answers to the "now what" problem. What the EcoVadis acquisition changed If you used Ulula before 2024, the product you would engage with now is not the same one. EcoVadis acquired Ulula and relaunched the product as Worker Voice Connect (formerly known as Ulula) — integrated into a platform whose core business is supplier ratings and scorecards. That is the critical distinction. EcoVadis is doing due diligence with workers as an afterthought. Worker voice was added to a ratings platform — it was not the foundation one was built on. When a tool is absorbed into a platform designed for a fundamentally different purpose, the product roadmap, the incentives, and the priorities change. EcoVadis serves thousands of companies at scale. That model requires standardization, volume, and simplicity. For a rating platform, that's the right design. For worker voice, it's a fundamental mismatch. Effective worker voice depends on long-term, trusted engagement — not volume. There is also a structural question any procurement or legal team should ask: EcoVadis rates suppliers, and those ratings are purchased by both brands and suppliers. Introducing a worker voice layer into that same commercial ecosystem creates a tension between the rating business and genuine worker feedback. Labor Solutions has no supplier rating business. Its only commercial interest is in the quality and volume of worker engagement. Audits assess. Surveys verify. IMPROVE acts. This is the framework that separates worker-driven due diligence from everything else. Audits assess compliance from the outside — they tell you what systems exist. Worker surveys verify whether those systems are working for the people inside them — they tell you what workers actually experience. WOVO IMPROVE drives action from the finding — it tells you what to do next, and tracks whether you did it. When a survey runs through WOVO , the lowest-scoring indicators automatically trigger IMPROVE — a structured supplier self-assessment that diagnoses root cause and generates a prioritized action plan, capped at three focus areas so suppliers aren't overwhelmed. The assessment adapts to the supplier's maturity level. Evidence upload and progress tracking create an auditable loop from finding to fix. IMPROVE was built because Labor Solutions saw, in real factories with real human resources managers, what happened when data arrived without a structure for action. Regulators don't ask whether you collected data. They ask whether the data led to remediation. IMPROVE creates the evidence trail. Grievance mechanisms that workers actually use A grievance mechanism that workers don't trust is not a grievance mechanism — it's a liability. WOVO Connect is built on a principle most grievance tools miss: the goal is not to manage complaints, it's to build a channel workers believe in enough to use. Workers can raise issues anonymously via app, SMS, QR code, WhatsApp, or WeChat — in their language, on a device they already have. Human resources managers and brand teams receive, sort, and respond through a case management dashboard. An unused grievance mechanism is a red flag, not a neutral outcome. The adidas partnership shows what this looks like over time: response time dropped from 49 hours to under 11 hours between 2019 and 2025, and grievance volume increased significantly — because workers trusted the channel enough to use it. The evidence base A randomized control trial across 7,500 workers at Shahi Exports in India — conducted by the University of Michigan, the University of Hawaiʻi, and Good Business Lab — found WOVO delivered a 52% net rate of return, with workers 44% less likely to be absent and 33% more likely to be retained. MIT research found worker voice programs linked to up to 15% productivity gains. After COVID factory closures in Vietnam, factories using WOVO achieved near-full workforce return in one month — versus 54% industry-wide. The adidas 2024 Annual Report cites WOVO by name as their primary worker data layer for CSDDD compliance. Labor Solutions reports 3.8 million active workers across 180 countries and 41 languages — active meaning within a defined engagement period, not registered accounts. The full HRDD stack — in one platform CSDDD compliance requires more than a survey. It requires: Ongoing worker risk intelligence — WOVO WELL Survey and Engage Accessible, trusted grievance mechanisms — WOVO Connect Documented remediation — WOVO IMPROVE Stakeholder training on rights and responsibilities — WOVO Educate These are not modular add-ons. They are an integrated system designed to function together — because HRDD is a process, not a project. Questions to ask any worker voice provider If you are evaluating worker voice platforms — including EcoVadis Worker Voice Connect (formerly known as Ulula) — these are the questions that surface the differences that matter: What happens after a survey? Is there a structured action pathway built into the platform, or does the client manage that independently? How is anonymity enforced — and can workers verify it independently of management? What is the provider's commercial model, and are there any structural conflicts with genuine worker feedback? Are reported worker numbers active users within a defined period, or registered accounts? Has the product's ownership or strategic direction changed recently, and what does that mean for implementation quality and long-term support? Does the platform track grievance mechanism utilization — not just volume — to confirm workers are actually engaging? Frequently asked questions What is worker-driven due diligence? Worker-driven due diligence is an approach to HRDD where identifying, prioritizing, and remediating risks is structured around what workers directly report — not what suppliers disclose or audits document. It requires a full loop: listening to workers, verifying findings, and driving structured action from the results. What is EcoVadis Worker Voice Connect? EcoVadis Worker Voice Connect (formerly known as Ulula) is a worker survey and grievance tool integrated into the EcoVadis supplier ratings platform. EcoVadis acquired Ulula in 2024 and relaunched the product as part of its broader sustainability ratings offering. How does WOVO differ from EcoVadis Worker Voice Connect? WOVO was built from the factory floor up, by a team with human resources and worker engagement backgrounds — not compliance or ratings. The core difference is structural: WOVO includes IMPROVE, a built-in action framework that turns survey findings into supplier action plans with progress tracking. Worker voice without a structured action pathway leaves brands with data and no clear next step. That gap is what IMPROVE was built to close. What does CSDDD require for worker voice? CSDDD requires brands to demonstrate ongoing meaningful engagement with workers in their value chains as part of human rights due diligence. That means not just collecting data, but showing that worker feedback led to documented action and remediation. A survey tool alone does not meet this standard — brands need evidence of the full loop from finding to fix. What is WOVO Connect? WOVO Connect is Labor Solutions' grievance mechanism module — an anonymous, multi-channel reporting tool available via app, SMS, QR code, WhatsApp, and WeChat in 41 languages. It includes a case management dashboard for human resources managers and brand teams, with utilization tracking to confirm the channel is functioning and trusted. The bottom line EcoVadis entering the worker voice space confirms what the regulatory environment already requires: worker engagement is no longer optional. But there is a meaningful difference between a ratings platform that added a survey tool and a platform built from the beginning to answer the question workers are actually asking: does anyone hear me, and did anything change? Labor Solutions has been doing worker-driven due diligence for 13 years — in real value chain environments, at scale, in ways that workers actually use, and in ways that lead to documented change. Audits assess. Surveys verify. IMPROVE acts. That full loop is what HRDD requires.

What CSDDD actually requires — and why the brands getting it right run a cycle, not a checklist. CSDDD does not use the word "audit." It does not require a one-time systems assessment or a point-in-time review. The word it uses — in Article 8, in Article 9, throughout — is "ongoing." Ongoing risk identification. Ongoing worker engagement. Ongoing access to remedy. Ongoing documentation of what you found and what you did about it. That word carries a structural implication that most compliance teams have not yet fully absorbed: you are not building a system. You are building a practice. And a practice, by definition, repeats. The difference between a project and a practice is not intensity or cost. It is what happens in Year Two. A project ends. A practice compounds. The brands that will have the strongest CSDDD evidence base in 2027 are not the ones that deployed the most tools in 2025. They are the ones that started their annual cycle early enough that they have multiple turns of data to show. Worker-Driven Due Diligence (HRDD) is the operating model that makes "ongoing" a reality — not a declaration of intent, but a documented, repeating cycle of listening, diagnosing, acting, and evidencing. This is what it looks like in practice. Worker-Driven Due Diligence in practice: four stages, run in sequence, every year. Stage 1: Workers tell you what audits can't. The WELL Worker Survey (Wellbeing, Engagement and Livelihoods) reaches workers directly — in their language, through channels they control, with anonymity that is credible because it is structurally guaranteed, not just promised. Workers share what they actually experience: wages, safety, management behavior, hours, recruitment. The survey runs across the supplier base simultaneously. You get a dataset, not a snapshot. Stage 2: Suppliers diagnose root cause. WOVO IMPROVE gives suppliers a self-assessment tool built around what workers indicated. The supplier does not receive a corrective action plan imposed from outside. They work through what their workers said, identify the root causes they can actually address, and build an action plan they own. Priorities are capped at three — because a list of forty corrective actions is not accountability. It is paralysis. Stage 3: Action plans generate evidence. Targeted action plans based on worker signals and the self-assessment are tracked over time. WOVO EDUCATE delivers rights-based digital training to workers and managers. WOVO CONNECT — an always-on operational grievance mechanism, not a hotline — remains open throughout the year so workers can raise concerns between survey cycles. All of this generates a documented trail: what was found, what was done, what changed. Stage 4: Reports make it producible. Global and local reports aggregate the data from every stage. Risk indicators. High-risk suppliers. Cohort trends. Supplier-level progress on action plans. Worker satisfaction scores over time. This is the documentation CSDDD Article 10 requires — and the evidence ESRS S2 reporting standards ask brands to disclose publicly. Then the cycle repeats. Annually. Because human rights is a practice, not a project. What the cycle reveals that no single deployment can The case for running an annual cycle rather than a one-time engagement is not philosophical. It is evidentiary. A seafood industry pilot using the WELL Survey found — in its first cycle — what no prior supplier reporting or audit had surfaced: debt bondage linked to local recruitment agencies, excessive hours, harassment and psychological safety concerns, and water and occupational health and safety issues across geographies. Ninety-two percent of workers participated. Eighty-seven percent of farmers participated. Thirty-eight thousand respondents across three languages. Zero prior visibility through conventional channels. That is what a first cycle surfaces. But a first cycle does not tell you whether conditions improved. It does not give you a baseline to measure against. It does not tell you which suppliers are responding to their action plans and which are not. It does not give you the trend data CSDDD requires as evidence of ongoing engagement. The second cycle does that. So does the third. In the electronics sector, Labor Solutions' WELL Survey found that 35% of suppliers who had passed recent social audits had workers paying illegal recruitment fees — a serious forced labor indicator. Seventy-three percent of workers in that same cohort had low awareness of their rights. Both findings required a second cycle to begin measuring improvement. The first cycle is necessary. It is not sufficient. What changes when suppliers own their improvement The structural difference between a corrective action plan (CAP) and a worker-driven action plan is ownership. CAPs are issued from outside. Supplier self-assessments are built from within — starting with what workers said, worked through by the people who have to implement the changes. Carter's deployed the WELL Survey across 65,000+ workers in 24 suppliers across five countries — Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Thailand, and Cambodia. The decision to move beyond audits reflected a recognition that audit data was not telling them what was happening to workers in their value chain. Crucially, Carter's integrated WELL Survey scores into their Vendor Scorecard — embedding worker experience data into the sourcing decisions that suppliers actually respond to. When worker voice data has commercial consequences for the supplier relationship, supplier engagement in the improvement cycle is not optional. It is structural. That integration — worker survey findings into commercial accountability — is the operational definition of a Worker-Driven Due Diligence programme. It is also what CSDDD expects: that the findings of ongoing engagement with workers have consequences, and that those consequences are documented. One year of data satisfies the minimum. Three years is what holds up under ESRS S2 scrutiny. CSDDD Article 10 requires companies to produce documented evidence of what they did to prevent and mitigate human rights risks — and what changed as a result. This is not a policy question. It is a data question. And data accumulates over time, not at deployment. ESRS S2, which governs how companies subject to CSRD must report publicly on their value chain worker engagement, requires disclosure of: the channels through which workers can raise concerns; the effectiveness of those channels; the company's approach to due diligence; and the outcomes of that approach. A company reporting in 2026 with one year of data reports minimally. A company reporting with three years of trend data reports compellingly. The brands that will satisfy ESRS S2 scrutiny are not those that deployed the best tools. They are the ones that deployed early enough to have a story to tell — a story that begins "in Year One, we found this; in Year Two, conditions changed in these ways; by Year Three, satisfaction across our Tier 1 base had moved from this to that." That story requires a cycle. It requires repetition. It requires not stopping after Year One because the results were uncomfortable or the supplier engagement was harder than expected. WOVO is the platform that makes repetition operationally feasible at scale — 3.8 million active workers, 180+ countries, 41+ languages, deployable across a Tier 1 supplier base as a continuous annual programme, not a periodic project. The compliance posture that actually holds up under scrutiny When a regulator asks whether your company has engaged workers in its value chain, there are two possible answers. One is: "We deployed a worker survey." The other is: "We have been running a Worker-Driven Due Diligence cycle for three years. Here are the findings from each year, the supplier improvement plans those findings generated, the change in worker satisfaction scores over that period, and the grievance resolution data from the mechanism workers used between survey cycles." The first answer is a project. The second is a practice. CSDDD is not asking for the first. Labor Solutions is the provider of the WOVO platform — the only worker engagement tool focused exclusively on value chain workers and suppliers, deployed continuously, in 180+ countries and 41+ languages. The proof points cited in this post reflect confirmed programme data from WOVO deployments across apparel, footwear, electronics, and seafood value chains. Frequently Asked Questions Does running a worker survey once satisfy CSDDD's ongoing engagement requirement? No. CSDDD requires ongoing worker engagement — not a one-time survey. A single survey cycle establishes a baseline. Ongoing compliance requires an annual cycle of listening, root cause analysis, supplier improvement tracking, and grievance mechanism access between cycles. Single-cycle data cannot demonstrate the trend evidence CSDDD and ESRS S2 require. What is Worker-Driven Due Diligence? Worker-Driven Due Diligence (HRDD) is Labor Solutions' framing for human rights due diligence built on continuous, direct worker engagement — as opposed to audit-based models that are point-in-time and externally assessed. It means workers generate the primary data through validated surveys and always-on grievance mechanisms, suppliers own their improvement plans, and brands accumulate longitudinal evidence of what is actually happening in their value chains. How is the WOVO annual cycle different from a social audit program? Social audits assess what a supplier built — policies, documented systems, physical conditions — on a specific day. The WOVO cycle generates what workers know: their actual experiences, through channels they trust, continuously. An audit produces a compliance rating. The WOVO cycle produces a dataset that compounds in value every year it is repeated — and that satisfies the ongoing engagement and evidence standards CSDDD requires. What does CSDDD require as evidence of worker engagement? CSDDD requires companies to document that they identified human rights risks in their value chains, took action to prevent or mitigate those risks, and can demonstrate the outcomes of those actions. This requires primary worker data (not audit reports), a functioning grievance mechanism with usage and resolution data, documented supplier improvement plans, and longitudinal trend data showing what changed. ESRS S2 adds public reporting obligations for companies subject to CSRD. How quickly can an annual cycle be established? The first survey cycle can be deployed within weeks across a Tier 1 supplier base using the WOVO platform. WOVO CONNECT is always-on from the point of deployment. The first full cycle — survey, self-assessment, action plans, and initial reporting — is typically complete within a year, positioning brands to begin their second cycle with a documented baseline and a functioning supplier engagement infrastructure already in place. If you are working toward CSDDD compliance If you are building a worker engagement programme ahead of CSDDD obligations, the Carter's case study shows what a structured, multi-country deployment looks like when worker data is integrated into sourcing decisions. If you are in seafood, agriculture, or food supply chains, the seafood worker voice programme documents what a first cycle surfaces in high-risk migrant worker contexts. If you need a practical breakdown of what CSDDD requires at each article, the CSDDD practical guide maps each obligation to the evidence standard it demands. And if you are ready to begin, contact the Labor Solutions team to scope a Worker-Driven Due Diligence programme for your value chain.

A Labor Solutions Case Study | adidas 2025 Sustainability Report The adidas 2025 Annual Report , published under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) section on Workers in the Value Chain , contains a number that would alarm most compliance teams: a 32% increase in worker grievances. This post unpacks why adidas counts it as a milestone — and what six years of WOVO data reveal about what a functioning operational grievance mechanism actually looks like. More Complaints, Same 99% Resolution Rate: Why Volume Growth Is the Metric adidas Wanted When grievance volumes rise, most brands get nervous. At adidas, a 32% increase is a sign the system is working. In 2025, workers submitted close to 47,200 complaints through WOVO — up from 35,700 in 2024 — and 99% were resolved by year-end. Higher volume, same near-perfect resolution rate: that is proof of trust, not a problem. Satisfaction Rose From 39% to 79% in Six Years — and the Trajectory Is Still Improving Worker satisfaction with grievance resolution has risen from 39% in 2019 to nearly 79% in 2025 — a 40-point transformation over six years of consistent WOVO investment. Average response time fell from 49 hours in 2020 to under 11 hours in 2025. Workers who raise a concern today can expect a response in less than half a business day. The Supplier Base Shrank. Worker Coverage Didn't. 402,500 Workers Still Have Full Access. In 2025, more than 402,500 workers across 92 manufacturing facilities in ten countries had access to WOVO — covering 100% of adidas' core Tier 1 manufacturing partners. The reduction from 105 facilities in 2024 reflects value chain consolidation, not a reduction in WOVO coverage. From Miscommunication to Missing Benefits Workers Finally Have a Channel For Everyday Concerns The 47,200 grievances in 2025 spanned internal communication (~13,300 cases), benefits (~8,300), and general facilities (~5,800). These are the everyday friction points that go unvoiced when workers don't trust the channel — and that quietly erode morale and retention when left unaddressed. The 99% resolution rate means nearly every complaint gets closed; the 79% satisfaction rate means workers find the outcomes fair. 91% Favorable Across 96 Facilities: How adidas Listens Before Problems Escalate The Worker Pulse survey ran across 96 facilities in 13 countries in 2025, with favorable responses reaching nearly 91% — up from 78% in 2020. The Gender Equality survey reached 51,000 workers with an average favorable score of 87/100. Together with the grievance mechanism, these create a three-channel listening infrastructure: reactive, proactive, and targeted. Every Complaint Feeds a Supplier KPI: How Worker Voice Becomes Management Consequence adidas does not treat WOVO data as a reporting metric — it treats it as an operational input. Grievance satisfaction ratings, response time data, and KPI dashboards feed directly into adidas' supplier social impact (S-KPI) rating. Workers who use WOVO know that what they say influences how their factory is rated. Six CSDDD Requirements. Six Data Points. An Evidence Base Built Over Six Years. CSDDD requires access to remedy that is effective, not just available. adidas' 2025 model: Accessible (402,500+ workers), Used (47,200 grievances), Trusted (79% satisfaction), Fast (<11 hours), Measured (supplier KPIs), Proactive (Worker Pulse + Gender Equality surveys). This is the standard CSDDD expects — and a didas has built an evidence base showing consistent improvement year over year. Ready to build a program like this? Contact Labor Solutions to discuss how WOVO can support your due diligence and worker engagement program. Source: adidas 2025 Annual Sustainability Report (ESRS S2). All data drawn from adidas' public disclosures.

Regulatory expectations on human rights due diligence are increasing across jurisdictions. The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and related legislation make clear that companies must identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for adverse impacts on workers throughout their supply chains.  The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights ( UNGPs ) provide the governance framework. The Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs ) articulate the social and economic outcomes.  How can companies generate credible, comparable evidence about workers’ lived experience across global supply chains?  The WELL Survey (Wellbeing, Engagement and Livelihoods Survey) was developed to address this gap.  Led by Labor Solutions and co-created through a multi-stakeholder group of brands, advisors, and industry actors - including early contributors such as adidas, H&M, Decathlon, carter’s, Lake Advisory and others - the WELL Survey provides a standardized, modular worker survey framework designed for global benchmarking and local relevance.  It functions as:  A supply chain worker survey  A labor rights survey tool  A human rights due diligence survey  A workforce listening platform  Most importantly, it captures structured, experience-based worker data aligned with internationally recognized standards.  Worker Voice as a Core Element of Human Rights Due Diligence Under the UNGPs, companies must: Identify actual and potential human rights impacts  Integrate findings into decision-making  Track effectiveness  Provide access to remedy  Meaningful engagement with affected stakeholders - particularly workers - is central to this responsibility.  The WELL Survey operationalizes that engagement requirement. Rather than assessing policy intent or documentation alone, it collects worker-reported experience across standardized indicators. This enables organizations to evaluate whether management systems function as intended in practice.  The framework directly supports alignment with:  SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth  SDG 16 – Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions  SDG 5 – Gender Equality  SDG 3 – Good Health and Well-being  SDG 10 – Reduced Inequalities  SDG 1 , SDG 2 , SDG 4 , SDG 6 and SDG 11 where relevant  Comprehensive Indicator Framework   The WELL Survey includes a standardized Core Questionnaire, with optional modules and limited customization capacity. Each indicator represents a fixed grouping of experience-based questions, ensuring comparability across suppliers, brands, and geographies.  Governance, Voice and Institutional Accountability  Engagement - Worker trust in management, perception of responsiveness  Communication - Access to information and ability to raise questions  Leadership - Fair, inclusive, and accountable management  Access to Remedy - Confidence that concerns are addressed  Grievance Mechanism Accessibility - Safe and barrier-free reporting channels  Grievance Mechanism Process + Transparency - Clear and consistent complaint handling  Freedom of Association - Ability to organize and participate collectively  These indicators align particularly with SDG 8 (worker participation and labor rights) and SDG 16 (transparency, accountability, institutional effectiveness).  Livelihoods, Economic Security and Labor Conditions  Fair Pay + Compensation - Transparent wage calculation and income sufficiency  Fair Working Hours - Predictable schedules and voluntary overtime  Responsible Recruitment - No recruitment fees, clear contracts, absence of debt bondage  Freedom of Movement - No coercion or restriction of employment mobility  Child Labor Prevention - Protection of education and development  These indicators align primarily with SDG 8 (decent work), SDG 1 (income security), SDG 4 (education), and SDG 10 (protection of vulnerable groups).  Equality, Protection and Opportunity  Gender Equity - Addressing structural barriers and ensuring equitable access  Equality (Non-Discrimination) - Equal treatment across demographic groups  Professional Development - Fair access to training and advancement  Harassment + Abuse - Protection from physical and psychological harm Sexual Harassment - Protection from gender-based violence  These align with SDG 5 (gender equality), SDG 10 (reduced inequalities), and SDG 16 (protection from violence and discrimination).    Health, Safety and Living Conditions  Occupational Health + Safety – Safe working environments and injury prevention  Workplace Climate + Environment – Access to sanitation, water, and dignified facilities  Dormitories + Accommodation – Safe, clean, and adequate housing  Wellbeing – Emotional, physical, and financial health  Family + Work Balance – Policies supporting caregiving and work-life balance  Social Connection – Ability to build relationships and community  These indicators align with SDG 3 (health and wellbeing), SDG 6 (water and sanitation), SDG 11 (adequate housing), and SDG 8 (dignified work).  Standardization with Local Relevance   A persistent challenge in supply-chain worker surveys is duplication and fragmentation. Suppliers are often asked to respond to multiple overlapping surveys, reducing efficiency and worker trust.  The WELL Survey was designed as a shared framework to streamline this landscape.  Its structure includes:  A fixed Core Questionnaire for global benchmarking  Optional modules addressing specific risk areas (e.g., grievance systems, recruitment, working hours)  Up to three custom questions to reflect local priorities  Because each indicator is standardized, results remain comparable across industries and countries while still allowing contextual relevance.  Experience-Based Design and Reporting   The survey uses experience-based questions to encourage candid responses and reduce abstract or perception-only metrics. All surveys are multilingual, supporting accessibility across diverse regions.  Participating organizations receive structured reporting, including:  Indicator rankings  Employee Net Promoter Scores (eNPS)  Demographic breakdowns  Year-over-year tracking  This enables trend analysis, benchmarking, and targeted corrective action planning.  Participating workplaces may also earn the annual WELL Seal, demonstrating commitment to structured worker voice measurement.  From Measurement to Alignment     The SDGs define development objectives. The UNGPs define corporate governance responsibilities.  The WELL Survey provides a structured mechanism to assess whether workplace conditions align with those expectations in practice.  It does not duplicate what audits assess — physical facility conditions, policy existence, building safety. It reaches what audits were never designed to access: what workers actually experience. In an environment where regulators, investors, and consumers increasingly require demonstrable due diligence, structured worker voice is no longer optional. It is a governance necessity.  The WELL Survey was designed to meet that need - through multi-stakeholder collaboration, standardized methodology, and globally comparable indicators. Workplaces improve when worker experience is systematically measured, analyzed, and acted upon.

A Labor Solutions Case Study Grievance Intergrity Program: Closing the Gap Between Grievance Mechanism Effectiveness + Worker Experience This case study examines how a global electronics supply chain  ran the Grievance Integrity  program — Labor Solutions' structured assessment of grievance mechanism effectiveness — across supplier facilities. T WELL Worker Survey , focus group discussions, and WOVO Improve ’s Supplier Self-Assessment (SAQ) were combined to verify that mechanisms were not just in place, but actually accessible and known by workers. The results showed a consistent pattern: workers generally recognize grievance channels and feel comfortable raising routine issues, but confidence drops when issues require escalation, transparency, or consistent follow-through. Suppliers largely reported mature systems on paper, while worker inputs highlighted uneven application across supervisors and uncertainty about what happens after a concern is raised.   All assessed suppliers entered a tracked corrective action phase, demonstrating how triangulation strengthens evidence of grievance mechanism effectiveness in line with UNGP criteria and emerging EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive ( CSDDD ) expectations. Context Regulatory Expectations Increasingly Focus on Grievance Mechanism Effectiveness in Practice Human rights due diligence frameworks, including CSDDD and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), require companies to demonstrate that grievance mechanisms function effectively for workers. This requires evidence beyond policy existence, including worker awareness, trust, use, and access to remedy. To respond to these expectations, a global electronics supply chain deployed the Grievance Integrity  program across supplier facilities — a structured, four-part assessment designed to verify grievance mechanism effectiveness in practice, mapped against all eight UNGP Principle 31  effectiveness criteria. The Assessment Examined Access, Trust, Predictability, and Remedy The assessment evaluated whether grievance mechanisms were: Accessible and known to workers Trusted and used without fear Applied consistently across supervisors and departments Capable of delivering timely and credible outcomes The analysis focused on identifying gaps between formal system design  and worker experience . Triangulated Data Enabled Comparison Between Policy and Practice The assessment combined three sources of evidence: WELL Worker Survey , capturing awareness, comfort speaking up, and perceptions of fairness at scale Facilitated Focus Group Discussions , providing insight into worker behavior, trust, and escalation dynamics WOVO Improve 's Supplier Self-Assessments , documenting grievance system structure and procedures Triangulation allowed inconsistencies between documented systems and lived experience to be identified and validated. Results Worker Surveys Show Broad Awareness but Low Confidence in Escalation Survey results indicated high awareness of grievance channels and strong comfort raising routine operational issues, typically through immediate supervisors. However, confidence declined when survey questions related to escalation, response timelines, and outcomes beyond the first level of resolution. These patterns suggested that while access to grievance mechanisms was established, predictability and follow-through were less certain in more complex cases. Focus Groups Revealed Uneven Experience Within Facilities Focus group discussions clarified grievance mechanisms often worked well for day-to-day concerns but were less consistently trusted for sensitive or higher-stakes issues. Workers described uncertainty around escalation, uneven application across supervisors, and reluctance to use formal channels due to fear of identification or perceived performance consequences. These findings showed that grievance mechanism effectiveness varied within the same facility, depending on department and supervisor. Supplier Self-Assessments Confirmed System Design but Not Worker Experience Supplier self-assessments generally reported established grievance systems with defined channels and procedures. However, when compared with worker inputs, a consistent gap emerged. Workers reported limited visibility into timelines and outcomes and inconsistent application in practice. The assessment identified a recurring divergence between system existence  and system effectiveness as experienced by workers . Triangulation Produced Credible Evidence of Effectiveness Gaps Viewed together, the data showed a Corroborated Gap pattern: management-reported systems and worker experience both pointed to the same shortfalls. Grievance mechanisms functioned adequately for routine issues, but were less predictable and transparent when escalation or sensitive concerns were involved. Triangulation enabled the assessment to move beyond isolated perspectives and produce structured findings against the eight UNGP Principle 31  effectiveness criteria — particularly Predictable, Transparent, and Equitable — supporting credible due diligence disclosure. Actions Targeted Predictability, Consistency, and Communication All assessed suppliers entered the action plan phase of the Grievance Integrity  program, using the WOVO Improve's Action Plan , for buyer-facing tracking. Each action plan addressed a maximum of three priority competency gaps per cycle — with salient indicator gaps addressed first, regardless of overall site score. Actions focused on closing the specific gaps identified through triangulation and commonly included: Clarifying grievance steps and response timelines Strengthening escalation pathways beyond immediate supervisors Improving communication on case status and outcomes Training supervisors on consistent grievance handling Strengthening documentation and closure tracking Conclusion Triangulation Strengthens Due Diligence and Improves Worker Outcomes This case study demonstrates that the Grievance Integrity  program provides a practical and defensible method for assessing grievance mechanism effectiveness in practice — structured against all eight UNGP Principle 31  effectiveness criteria and aligned with CSDDD expectations. By converting findings into tracked corrective action, the approach strengthens human rights due diligence and supports grievance mechanisms that deliver more predictable and trusted outcomes for workers. A single result is a signal. A trend is evidence. The program runs on an annual cycle — because conditions change, workforces change, and management changes. Verification is not a document. It is workers reporting that their experience has changed. Want to learn how to assess grievance mechanism effectiveness in practice? Explore our approach to worker-verified grievance assessment.

Turning Supply Chain Transparency into Action: Labor Solutions Integrates Worker Voice Data with Open Supply Hub Labor Solutions is partnering with Open Supply Hub  to integrate worker voice data directly into production location profiles. Launching Q1 2026, users can now see worker voice tools — including our operational grievance channel, WOVO Connect  — mapped to specific facilities on Open Supply Hub's open-source map of 150,000+ production locations worldwide. Benefits for Workers Worker Rights Shouldn't Be Invisible — This Integration Makes Them Visible Open Supply Hub connects production facilities to the brands that source from them. By mapping Labor Solutions' worker voice data to those facilities, we make it possible to confirm the existence and quality of operational grievance mechanisms at a glance — without relying on audits or self-reported supplier assessments. For Workers: Visibility Drives Remedy, Not Just Reporting Having a grievance channel isn't enough — what matters is whether grievances are actually managed and remediated. Our data shows that when visibility is combined with aligned internal KPIs for grievance handling and remediation, working conditions measurably improve. As the industry moves toward making grievance mechanisms that reach all workers the norm, we can finally shift focus to what happens after a worker speaks up. Responsible Employers Are Good Employers — and Now It Shows Facilities with strong operational grievance mechanisms and responsive management tend to get other things right too. With this integration, positive worker voice data becomes a verifiable competitive advantage — rewarding suppliers who invest in their workforce with better buyers, which in turn creates the conditions for workers to be well paid and genuinely empowered at work. Benefits for Suppliers Show Buyers You're Serious About Worker Rights Suppliers using WOVO Connect can now showcase their use of digital grievance tools with documented transparency. Beyond simply having the tool in place, they can choose to share data and have direct conversations with buyers about responsiveness and workplace improvements — turning compliance into a business differentiator. Attract the Buyers Who Value Ethical Production As brands increasingly prioritize human rights due diligence, facilities with transparent worker voice data and documented improvements stand out. This integration helps responsible suppliers connect with buyers who value ethical production. See How You Compare — and Where to Improve Access to aggregated industry data helps suppliers understand where they stand and identify areas where they are falling behind. We hope that factories that do not have digital grievance channels will consider it when they see their competitors have WOVO Connect or other tools in place.   Benefits for Brands Stop Asking Whether a Grievance Channel Exists — Start Asking Whether It Works If a site has a digital grievance tool like WOVO Connect, brands don't need to rely on audits or supplier self-assessments to confirm the basics. The focus shifts to quality: how cases are managed, how quickly issues are resolved, and what improvements result. Better grievance data means better risk assessment and better outcomes for workers. This Is What Supply Chain Collaboration Actually Looks Like This partnership reflects our belief that transparency requires the whole ecosystem to contribute. By integrating our worker voice data into Open Supply Hub's open platform, we're joining partners including Climate TRACE, Living Wage Institute, WageIndicator Foundation, amfori, Apparel Impact Institute, EcoVadis/Ulula, PEFC, SLCP, and Worldly — building a comprehensive, multi-dimensional view of production locations worldwide. Ready to Put Worker Voice on the Map? Learn more about Open Supply Hub's data integrations here . Already using WOVO Connect and want to be listed on Open Supply Hub’s website? Get in touch. Interested in implementing worker voice in your supply chain? Contact Labor Solutions to learn how our WOVO platform delivers tangible outcomes for workers while strengthening your due diligence.

Organizations: GIZ Responsible Business Hub (RBH) Network ; Labor Solutions Launch Date: July 2025 | Geographic Scope: Global (23 countries) Why This Matters  Compliance Expectations Are Rising — But Most Suppliers Still Lack the Tools to Act Suppliers across global value chains are under increasing pressure to demonstrate compliance with Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD) requirements. While expectations are rising, many suppliers — particularly in sourcing countries — lack access to affordable, practical, and localized training that enables them to translate due diligence standards into day-to-day operational practice. To address this gap, the GIZ Responsible Business Hub (RBH) Network and Labor Solutions co-developed HREDD in Action: A Practical Approach for Suppliers , a free, scalable, multilingual e-learning program designed to build supplier implementation capacity rather than awareness alone.  The course is delivered via the atingi learning platform  and WOVO Educate , expanding access for suppliers, brands, and ecosystem partners.  The Gap Suppliers Face Cost, Language, and Complexity Are Blocking Suppliers From Implementing HREDD Suppliers face recurring structural challenges, including:  Limited access to affordable, high-quality training  Language and localization gaps  Difficulty translating international standards into operational processes  Misalignment between buyer expectations and supplier realities  Without targeted and practical support, these barriers slow progress on responsible business conduct and increase compliance and reputational risk for both suppliers and buyers.  Turning Expectations Into Action  We Built a Free, Multilingual Program to Turn Expectations Into Action The RBH Network and Labor Solutions designed a supplier-centric, practice-oriented e-learning program focused on operationalizing HREDD requirements.  Key design principles included:  Free and scalable access to remove cost barriers  Multilingual delivery to support suppliers in sourcing countries  Practical, application-first content embedded with tools and templates  Alignment with buyer expectations through multinational peer review  The program enables suppliers to apply HREDD concepts through e-learning directly within existing business processes.  Designed for Application, Not Theory  17 Modules, Real Scenarios, Embedded Templates — Built for Operational Use, Not Theory The course was developed using a learner-centered methodology, including:  Needs-based design informed by pre-survey data on supplier challenges across RBH countries  Modular structure enabling flexible, self-paced learning  Scenario-based learning and country-specific case studies reflecting real operating environments  Embedded implementation tools, including:  Risk identification and assessment templates  Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) integration checklists  Sample grievance mechanism components and remediation pathways  Monitoring, documentation, and communication templates  Peer review by 11 multinational enterprises to ensure alignment with buyer expectations  Localization and translation to enhance relevance and comprehension  Delivery via atingi and WOVO Educate enables open access, learner tracking, and certification.    What the Program Covers  From HREDD Foundations to Country-Specific Practice The program consists of 17 interactive modules, covering:  Foundations of HREDD  Introduction to HREDD  Business relevance and resilience  Human rights and environmental risks and impacts  The HREDD Process (Supplier Perspective)  Embedding Responsible Business Conduct (RBC)  Risk identification and assessment  Prevention and mitigation of adverse impacts  Grievance mechanisms and access to remedy  Monitoring and communication of performance  Country-Specific Case Studies  Cambodia Tunisia Pakistan Türkiye Bangladesh Vietnam Serbia  Responsible Contracting  Introduction to Supplier Model Contract Clauses  Assessment and Certification  Participants complete a knowledge assessment and receive an official certificate upon successful completion.  Built for Global Access  Free in 10 Languages, Available to Suppliers in 23 Countries The course is available free of charge in: English; Khmer; Mandarin; Spanish; Turkish; Vietnamese; Urdu; French; Serbia; Bangla.  This multilingual approach supports supplier learning in local business and regulatory contexts.  What Changed  Hundreds of Suppliers Trained Across 23 Countries Within Months of Launch Within months of launch:  Suppliers reached in 23 countries  Hundreds of suppliers trained on practical HREDD implementation  17 modular learning units delivered at scale  11 multinational enterprises engaged as peer reviewers  Strong uptake across sourcing regions, signaling demand for practical, supplier-focused capacity building    How It Was Built  Built With Buyers and Suppliers Together The program was developed through collaboration between:  GIZ Responsible Business Hub (RBH) Network  Labor Solutions  Responsible Contracting Project  11 multinational enterprises serving as peer reviewers  This ensured technical credibility, operational feasibility, and alignment across buyers and suppliers.  Use It Standalone or Integrate It Into Your Due Diligence System The program works as a standalone capacity-building intervention — or as part of an integrated approach: Supporting Supplier Improvement  The course builds practical understanding of roles, responsibilities, and implementation steps, increasing readiness for corrective action, remediation, and continuous improvement.  Responding to Worker Insights  Insights from worker voice and survey data, including WELL Survey results, can guide targeted deployment when gaps are identified in grievance mechanisms, access to remedy, or due diligence processes.  Strengthening Grievance Handling  When paired with CONNECT , the course ensures that individuals receiving worker messages understand:  Worker rights and supplier responsibilities under HREDD  How grievance mechanisms should function in practice  Appropriate response, escalation, and remediation pathways  This ensures worker messages are not only received, but understood and acted upon appropriately.  Complementing Worker Education  Supplier training can be paired with worker-focused education on rights awareness and grievance use, strengthening shared understanding, trust, and system effectiveness.  Put It to Work Get Started: The Course Is Free Organizations seeking to strengthen supplier due diligence implementation, improve grievance mechanism effectiveness, or translate worker insights into action can deploy HREDD in Action: A Practical Approach for Suppliers as a standalone intervention or as part of an integrated approach. The course is available free of charge via:  atingi:  https://lnkd.in/gFr-W-TA   WOVO Educate To learn more about implementing custom eLearning curricula at your organization with WOVO Educate or your own LMS, get in touch with us.