Levi Strauss Foundation Grantee Roundtable: Furthering Workers

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Levi Strauss Foundation Grantee Roundtable
Furthering Workers Rights through Innovation and
Collaboration

• Ho Chi Minh City
• August 5th and 6th
• Day 2

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Agenda Day 2

• 900am Review Objectives for the Day (Ayesha
  Barenblat)
• 915am Wrap up In-Factory Challenges Discussion
• 940am External Challenges (Ayesha Barenblat)
• 1000am Building the Business Case (Scott Chang)
• 1030am Break
• 1045am Measuring Impact (BSR)
• 1200pm Lunch Riverside Café
• 100pm Scale (Ayesha Barenblat, Small group
  discussion)
• 200pm Peer Network (Scott Chang)
• 220pm Break
• 300pm Grantee and Funder Feedback (Ayesha
  Barenblat)
• 330pm Closing (Daniel Lee)

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External Challenges
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Current Challenges Grantee Perspectives
External Pressures
Buyer misalignment
Legal enforcement
Economic Crisis
Union capacity
Government engagement
FoA challenges
Internal Pressures
Time
Management buy-in
Building Trust
Turnover
Gender Dynamic
Worker appetite / literacy
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Issue 1 Making the Government our Ally

• How do we want to engage with the government in
  our work?
• Who?
• How do we find them?
• What could be their role?
• What impact do you want to achieve?
• What could the foundation do to help with
  government engagement?
• Lets shift our thinking Can the government be
  allies in our work instead of a scapegoat for
  why things dont work?

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Example Better Work Model
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Issue 2. The Capacity of Service Providers (SP)
We need to spend more time training. We need
to invest in capacity building, which may not be
a goal of the project. If we had good local
trainers, wed end up saving money. Instead, we
send people all across the country, increasing
travel costs --Grantee Comment
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The Needs of Factory Workers
Number of Responsible Buyers
Number of Willing Suppliers
SP Capacity is our ability a bottleneck to
progress?
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Issue 3 Buyer Alignment

• The Business Context
• Economic Crisis Workers are quiet as jobs are
  more scarce
• Garment Industry Trends Lower margins, lower
  prices, fewer orders higher likelihood of
  noncompliance
• For discussion
• What are the challenges on buyer alignment and
  how can we really partner with companies on their
  existing social compliance efforts?

Its been a lot easier to run these worker
programs in the cement industry because the
industry is generally longer term than the
garment industry --Grantee Comment
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Building the Business Case
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• If you have built castles in the air, your work
  need not be lost that is where they should be.
  Now put the foundations under them.
• --Henry David Thoreau

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Thinking through the business case
Is there a business case?
Yes
No
Prove it!!
Should we continue?
We build a business
No
Yes
Why?
Sustain the work
To improve life for workers
Better health
Workers can stand up for their rights in the
workplace
Grow Skills
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Thinking through the business case
Is there a business case?
Yes

• Business Reasons for Worker RR
• Improve employee retention
• Increased loyalty
• Better skilled and more efficient workers
• Increased productivity levels
• Reduce risks

Prove it!!
We build a business
We measured in the traditional ways, and I admit
this is an area of weakness PRA, post training
questionnaires, etc. We never found a way to
truly measure a hard bottom line related to labor
productivity. --Interviewee Comment
Sustain the work
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Business Case Varies Greatly based on the Audience
Worker Line Supervisor
Factory Manager Funder

• Traditional Business Case Rationale
• Improve employee retention
• Increased loyalty
• Better skilled and more efficient workers
• Increased productivity levels
• Reduce risks

Brand
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Thinking beyond the business case
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is this where youd want your daughters to work?
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Demonstrating Value Beyond a Business Case

• The lack of a business case doesnt mean the work
  is not worthwhile.
• However, it also means that its even more
  important to think about the value created by the
  projects
• These projects create real value but what is the
  value?
• How can we be as rigorous, comprehensive, and
  creative around measuring the value of our work??

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Measuring Impact
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• He uses statistics as a drunken man uses
  lampposts - for support rather than for
  illumination. 
• --Andrew Lang

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Current State Measurement as Process

• Skepticism
• There is skepticism about what you can measure,
  and whether measuring those data points actually
  measures your impact.
• Dont believe you can change behavior in one
  training. We have evaluations, but in the long
  run, we often identify that the impact was not as
  great as we thought. Problems are more
  structural.
• You have better success if you bound your
  expectations for what behavioral changes can be
  realistically influenced through the training.
• Technical Feedback
• Pre-Training Baseline Studies
• Training evaluations
• How much of the content was understood (wrap-up
  activity)
• How good was our access
• Assessments after training 15 days later, 3
  months after, 6 months after, etc.
• Technical difficulties primarily due to turnover
  and NGO capacity

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Shift When Measurement Adds Value
From an Grantee Interview Q. I know there are
so many factors involved, but in a perfect world,
how would you measure your impact? A. We do a
lot of work on health. Its hard to really
measure and determine what our impact here. But
in a perfect world, wed have some kind of
database that recorded health data for all of the
people we served. Our team could follow up with
people every quarter, record additional data, and
continue to provide health information. This
would require some kind of database, possibly one
that linked up with mobile phones or some other
easily transported input system.


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Key Questions

• How do we measure in a way that adds value to our
  work? (Instead of measuring for the sake of
  measurement!)
• What are the obstacles to doing this type of
  measurement? (and what are the root causes to our
  constraints?)
• What are some open source tools that we could
  create to make measurement a value-add instead of
  just a piece of process?

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Develop KPIs for the Following Topics

• People ? how this influences lives of workers,
  supervisors and management
• Process ? how you train
• Procedure ? changing SOPs within factories
• Policy ? changing government policies
• Goal of discussion is to come up with a list of
  KPIs for each category and a framework for
  categorizing them

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Give us a Framework heres ONE example
Short term Outcome
Long term Outcome
Inputs
Activities
Outputs
RESULTS OF PROGRAM
PROGRAM
Inputs Activities Outputs Short-Term Outcomes Long Term Goal
Amount of money invested in worker rights program Training conducted for workers Number of workers who have attended training Awareness raising Systematic behavioral changes
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Scale
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• No one can whistle a symphony.  It takes a whole
  orchestra to play it. 
• --H.E. Luccock

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Materials the Delivery Methods

• Curriculum can we make curriculum open source?
• If yes, what would a template for master
  curriculum would look like?
• If not, why?
• How do we adapt a master curriculum to local
  contexts?
• How can multimedia (technology, radio, tv, cell
  phones, internet, etc.) play a role in getting
  information out there more effectively?

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People Suppliers, SPs, Brands

• How can P2P mechanisms help us scale up delivery?
  
• DESIGN A PROJECT, P2P for RR
• Who else would you want at the table?
• Where should a collaborative project happen?
• What should the project DO?
• How should they work together?

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Interactive Discussion

• Group 1 BRAND Hilary, Bril, Tien, Bird, Pei Bin
  
• Group 2 SPs Daniel, Gabriela, Conor, Shaima,
  Chau, Dundar, Ayesha
• Group 3 SUPPLIERS Zoltan, Stan, Trang, Scott

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Creation of a Peer Network
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Questions

• Would you use this?
• How often do you have access to the Internet?
• How would you use this?
• How could make this a pull for you?
• Bemo Example Great site, very limited use

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Grantee and Funder Feedback
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Discussion Questions
Funders Grantee
What can we do to increase your impact? How challenging are the current reporting requirements? Whats been the most useful and challenging? How do I get consistent support? Are you flexible on the funding cycle? Whats been the most useful and challenging?
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Meeting Feedback
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• Length
• Content
• Facilitation
• Evolution Next Steps
• Please list 5 organizations (in any sector) that
  you want to see at the table next time. Be as
  specific as possible.

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Closing Remarks Levi Strauss Foundation Team