SLCP Worker Engagement Technology (WE Tech): Based on Participation and Dialogue

On 28 June 2024, Timeline, as the sole authorized service provider of SLCP’s Worker Engagement Technology (WE Tech) in China, was invited to attend Cascale’s Manufacturer Forum “Catalyst for Change” in Shanghai and gave a keynote speech on WE Tech at the Seminar on Empowering Workers and Ensuring Equity.

Photo: Timeline’s representative gave a keynote speech on SLCP WE Tech.

Photo: Group photo of speakers at the Seminar on Empowering Workers and Ensuring Equity.

 (All images above courtesy of Cascale)

Why focus on WE Tech at this moment?

WE Tech was born during the COVID-19 as an important addition to SLCP’s verification to make up for the lack of attention paid to worker voice. In particular, during the pandemic, a large number of verifications could only be carried out remotely online. In order to ensure the quality of verifications, SLCP launched WE Tech to increase worker participation in the verification process.

The launch of WE Tech coincides with the heightened attention paid by the international community and international brands in recent years to employee engagement, workplace dialogue and workplace cooperation. In particular, the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work (2019) lays out that the goal for the next 100 years is “decent work for all”. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, the Declaration emphasizes that this cannot be achieved without workplace dialogue and employee participation. WE Tech is essentially a form of employee engagement.

What exactly is WE Tech?

WE Tech is a worker survey technology serving SLCP verifications. It was launched as a pilot in 2022 and became official in 2023, aiming to incorporate workers’ voices, feelings and experiences into SLCP’s verification process by means of anonymous online questionnaires from workers, in order to timely discover some problems that cannot be found in traditional audits, and enable facilities to assess their own compliance management status quo more comprehensively and accurately, providing important reference data for facilities to formulate the improvement plan.

WE Tech consists of 20 multiple choice questions related to facility working conditions (e.g., worker satisfaction, grievance mechanisms, wages and benefits, health and safety, discrimination/harassment, etc.), It intends to complement, not duplicate, the questions on the SLCP CAF tool questions.

What benefits can WE Tech bring to facilities?

The worker survey itself serves as a powerful communication tool that can help facilities:

·         Reaches more workers and worker groups effectively and efficiently.

·         Enable facility management to better understand important workplace issues not evident from traditional onsite interviews.

·         If workers feel they are being listened to and see concerns addressed, worker productivity and motivation increases resulting in improved operational effectiveness and efficiency.

·         Improve facilities’ human rights due diligence (HRDD) capabilities.

·         Showcases facility as innovative and responsive to workers’ needs.

·         The use of WE Tech by facilities helps brands to see the facility’s commitment to worker engagement, which strengthens the relationship between the facility and the brand.

How can facilities use WE Tech?

WE Tech is activated during the facility self-assessment/joint assessment phase. Facilities and verifiers will receive a WE Tech summary report written by the service provider. The facility is required to incorporate the findings of the report into the SLCP self/joint assessment results. Based on the WE Tech findings, the facility identifies and prioritizes issues, collects additional data if necessary, performs root cause analysis on the prioritized issues and develops an improvement plan.

The verifier has access to and reviews the facility’s WE Tech Summary Report with self/joint assessment, improvement plan, and additional facility documentation at least 10 days prior to verification.

It is ultimately up to the facility to decide with whom to share the verification data, which includes the WE Tech Summary Report.

For more information about SLCP WE Tech, please visit https://slconvergence.org/we-tech.

What can Timeline offer?

Timeline, as one of SLCP’s authorized WE Tech service providers, can provide both basic and value-added services.

Basic services are based on SLCP’s requirements for service providers, including:

·         Remotely guide facilities to complete the collection of WE Tech survey data.

·         Maintain close communication with facilities from survey preparation to survey implementation, providing detailed internal communication guidelines and professional support to facilities to ensure data quality and response rate.

·         Produce an easy-to-read WE Tech Summary Report (in English) for the facility and the verifier, which includes the content required by SLCP, i.e., name of facility and date report generated, introduction, response rate, demographic info, overall theme results, and overall question results.

Value-added services are based on the higher-level personalized needs of facilities and brands, including but not limited to:

·         If a facility/brand wants to conduct some surveys in the supply chain on issues related to worker voice, Timeline can incorporate these additional concerns into WE Tech’s surveys, and the results of the surveys on these issues will only be analyzed and reported back to the facility/brand, thus reducing the need to repeat the surveys in the supply chain facilities.

·         Provide a more profound report, which will have more in-depth analysis and content such as:

o   Analyzing statistically significant differences between different worker groups (gender, age, origin, employment type, length of service) to identify specific groups worthy of attention in the facility;

o   If multiple facilities participate in WE Tech, Timeline can summarize the survey data of these facilities, conduct macro-level analysis on different product types, regions, levels, etc., identify high-risk facilities, and provide reference data for the brand on supply chain management strategy and for the industrial group on sub-facility management strategy;

o   Summarizing the survey itself and the data, including the overall data performance, Timeline’s findings on facility’s implementing surveys and worker participation, and issues that deserve facility’s attention;

o   Recommendations for sustainable improvement based on Timeline’s more than 20 years of experience in employee relations management consulting.

Welcome to contact us

Contact Person: Sunday Guo

Email address: gmay@timeline.com.cn

Phone number: (+86) 020 37616200