What Matters: Teaching the world to change

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Teaching the world to change

22 April 2010

An estimated 200 million children work in developing countries. Another 25 million people are enslaved in factories, farms, mines, and homes. Hundreds of millions more are cheated out of wages that are rightfully theirs and have no choice but to work in conditions that put them at risk of injury and even death.

It is easy to be numbed by these figures. So let’s consider the story of Rani, a girl we met in India in late 2009. Rani is now 14 and has worked at a spinning mill in Tirupur, a textile city located in the southern part of the country, since she was 11, bleaching cloth and using chemicals to wash garments. Her family sent her to the factory, which produces clothes for export, under the sumangali scheme, in which underage girls work far from home for three years, in return for a lump sum payment of around $750. Rani’s family had no other way to make enough money to pay her dowry. But after repeatedly burning herself with chemicals and suffering under the risk of sexual abuse from her employers, Rani ran away—returning home injured, poorer, and in conflict with her parents because she had forfeited the payment due to her.

Verite can resolve the specific problems Rani faces by intervening at that factory in India to improve its management, and by ensuring that Rani has the support she needs to stand up for herself. But our only chance of reaching the tens of millions of vulnerable people around the world—to achieve large-scale change—is to change the practices of others. Our primary approach to scaled change is to ensure that businesses around the world integrate the interests and needs of their most vulnerable participants. Our best chance to improve the rights and livelihoods of the many is if others replicate our intervention.

Here’s an example. One of our initial innovations was finding a way to elevate workers to the status of full stakeholders in the factories and farms where they work. We make sure that workers’ knowledge about the places that employ them becomes part of the picture we develop about working conditions. We do this in a deceptively simple way—by talking to them. But this conversation can be difficult to come by. On a recent assessment visit to a farm in the western United States we were told by the owners that work started at 10am, and that we should arrive at the field then. Instead of taking the owner at his word, our auditors showed up at 6:45am, to find two buses of migrant workers just arriving for work. We spent the next two hours hearing their stories, learning about their experiences and discussing their problems. Our findings from workers then become part of the facts we present to factory or farm management, and to the companies that buy their goods.

Too often this sort of investigation ignores the perspectives of workers. We set out to change this. After a year of multi-stakeholder conversations around the world we promulgated a standard for the conduct of social audits. This standard has now been adopted by a coalition of the world’s largest companies. We have simultaneously begun to train others outside Verite to conduct social audits according to this standard. As a result, our approach will be implemented by thousands of people around the world undertaking investigations at the behest of those companies. We leverage the information they provide to guide change in standards and management. Last year, our approach was formally adopted as an emerging standard by a coalition of the world’s largest companies. It will be implemented by thousands of people around the world undertaking investigations at the behest of those companies into the daily operations of factories and farms.

It’s important to note that this replication-oriented approach to entrepreneurial innovation may present some challenges. Sometimes investigators will undertake worker engagement effectively, but sometimes they will fail to follow the standards that we have promulgated. Some companies may decide to adopt and apply the standard completely, while others may choose portions of it or implement it halfheartedly in certain circumstances. In scaling this innovation, our recruitment of implementation partners necessitates that we give up control. The result may be some “implementations” that we don’t entirely endorse. But when companies take a first step towards responsibility, they have at least started walking forward.

This approach to scaling implies two challenges to the typical understanding of social entrepreneurship. First, entrepreneurship is often seen as a solitary pursuit, one that glorifies the individual (or her institution). At Verité, however, we believe that collaboration is an essential part of scaling social impact; our efforts require partners—both businesses and governments—at every step of the way. As with any partnership, we may in some cases lose control over the intervention. But we embrace the trade-off between control and expansion, believing that the problems we’re trying to address are so dire that it is imperative to reach as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. Our work with the world’s largest companies leverages billions of dollars of spending, vast but intangible corporate reputations, and thousands of daily business transactions into better working conditions for millions of people. At the same time, we recognize the limits of business “responsibility.” Social entrepreneurship can often overemphasize the role of private-sector frameworks. However, we believe that market mechanisms can make the achievement of human rights less costly. They can ensure, for example, ensure that Rani is more likely to prosper than face danger and disgrace in the workplace——but they can’t guarantee rights.

Only governments can guarantee rights for individuals and only governments can ensure that rights are respected wherever people are at risk. As social entrepreneurs we have to be clear on the limits of our own models—in particular, that markets are neither more nor less effective for delivering social goods than they are for delivering private goods. Our work with business, then, aims to create an environment that is conducive rather than hostile to government action. Over the past ten years, for example, multinational businesses have opened space in China for an explicit conversation about labor rights that the Chinese government may not have begun. Our work with international business lays the groundwork for changes in the acceptance of social regulation.

The question of scale for Verité is how we can reach tens of millions of people whose rights are constrained. We ourselves are about fifty people worldwide, a number small enough to be quite at odds with our aspirations. Like Archimedes, we seek a lever long enough to move the world. For us, this is the business world, which we hope to inspire with the feasibility of doing things better.

Comment [12]

Agree? Disagree? Let us know what you think. Please include your full name with your comment. Comments may be edited.

Dan , you are right . I feel people must be aware of their rights and responsibilities. And they must be given opportunities to decide that . We have recently started working with a business model to make workers entrepreneurs.

And we have witnessed some striking changes in the business and the most important is that the profitability is increasing and workers are adjusting the working hours and conditions among themselves in a way that suits them and the business best.

This observation has inspired us to expand this strategic business model with workers as entrepreneurs in high demand service verticals.

Posted 13 May 2010, 05:15 by Jaydip
considering that what Archimedes demanded was just “one firm and immovable point” , in order to shift the entire earth… so too can “a long lever” hope for great things if it manages to find that one thing, however slight, that is certain and unshakable.
what i am not sure to have understood, due to the ambiguity in possible interpretation of the text in reference, is: – what is that one firm and immovable variable that validates your archimedean potential?
Posted 10 May 2010, 15:21 by Vanda C
Great article Dan. Agree with you 100% on the power and value of worker empowerment and engagement, as well as the need to scale the work. Based on the work we did with you in the 2006 pilots in some of our supply chain factories in China, we have rolled the approach out globally and now formally engage workers in the assessment process in 100% of our factories. Last year we published a paper that outlines in detail our approach, hoping to inspire others to move from compliance audits to collaborative worker-engaged platforms. Here’s a link to our paper: http://earthkeeper.com/Resource_/PageResource/Beyond-Factory-Walls-2009_Timberland-Report.pdf. Thank you Verite for your help in seeding this great work and moving the needle to improve the lives of workers globally.

Posted 5 May 2010, 09:51 by Colleen Von Haden, Timberland Code of Conduct Manager
Awareness is critical – more important is self-awareness.
The solution lies in raising the level of consciousness in individuals, which will collectively raise social consciousess and national and finally universal consciousness.
Big words, yes, but change begins at an individual level.
Towards this end this article and awareness it spreads is critical.
Most humans need to be prodded, repeatedly, to be woken up!
the ultimate solution lies in Social change – where the concept of ‘Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man’ dominates and drives all actions.

Posted 28 April 2010, 13:05 by Anurag Sharma
Both the insightful quality of Dan’s article and the thoughtfulness of the comments he generated makes this the kind of blog I want to continue to read to get briefed on this huge task. As a former WSJ reporter who was lucky enough to attend Skoll Foundation’s World Forum and to meet and learn from two of your colleagues who attended i thank you for the service your provide via this

Posted 25 April 2010, 10:03 by Kare Anderson
The efforts made by Verite is commendable, considering their small number. It is not only such extreme cases as that of Rani but also of the educated many, that are unaware of their rights and dues. Educating employees helps, if there is a genuine lack of awareness regarding the negative effects of their policies and principles. But what about the millions of employers who are pretty well aware of what they are doing but yet, continue to do so, as to exploit their employees. Bringing about a social change is very much necessary, but this calls for sensitising and also penalising the errant employers. It calls for a social revolution where exploitation at any level need not be tolerated.

Posted 24 April 2010, 01:35 by Savita Rao
Raj’s article is well-written. Verite has been doing its bit to bring about changes in societies that are regressive, and which are slow to embrace change.

However, the style of Verite’s functioning rests on some caveats: one, that the “one-size-fits all” approach works uniformly in all situations. Rajasthan is a feudal place with a history of female infanticide and where women are relegated to living and functioning as chattel. Only government intervention, with strong legistation can help. Strong, pro-active legislation empowering women will definitely help. Two; the fact that organisations can be “persuaded” to act in the interests pf the larger good of society. Whis this is indeed laudable, the harsh fact is that firms/organisations have a lives and momentum of their own, and the mental and intellectual make up of the promoters/owners as indded their cultural value-systems would strongly influence their course of action as also their pre-dispostion towards charity and the like. There are businessmen who wouldn’t bat an eyelid while frittering away millions of rupees, and at the same time, do everything within their power to stop/avoid paying tax or embark upon schemes for the economic and social emancipation of women and children from the disadvantaged sections of society. The latest shenanigans of the IPL clearly demonstrates this.

What is needed is enlightened legistation , coupled with the development of a system where organisations are oriented towards wealth creation and also a re-distribution of both wealth and income so that the social and economic empowerment of those at the bottom of the pyramid would tale place effortlessly, to use CK Prahalad’s thesis.

Posted 23 April 2010, 21:25 by Rosen John
So much management literature points to inclusion, alignment of management with employees as necessary to maximize opportunities — for creativity, productivity and well-being that serves employees as well as the organization.
What Verite is doing serves the most severe cases of abused employees, for which it deserves praise. Additionally, this concept of talking to employees and understanding their experience is one that all companies can benefit from. Most organizations are so large and complex that leaders are disconnected from workers. They do not hear the voices of their workers or understand why they would benefit from understanding them. Most consultants know that educating leaders is their first job, telling them what is going on in their own organizations by listening to their workers for them. It is a small way of trying to reach the same outcomes of ethics, alignment and enlightened leadership in the organizations that we work with.

Posted 23 April 2010, 10:19 by Mary Karlsson
I think what you are doing is wonderful. Your question of scale maybe can be achieved by a process used by a well known chef in the UK , Jamie Oliver. He calls it “pass it on”. He wants people to learn how to cook. He teaches one person a recipe and tells him to pass it on to two others who agree to pass it on to two others.You can tell the people you talk to and help to “pass it on”, tell others and to tell them to tell others. Conversation is a wonderful tool, it can change the world.

Posted 23 April 2010, 06:17 by Jeffrey Frankel
It is very heartening to know that there are entities like Verite taking us towards a better world. I believe the key is to educate employers to be more humane towards child labor. Child labor may have advantages in imparting much needed skills if done the right way. In fact employers can be encouraged in having an ergonomic work place as well as giving an educational opportunity to help the children complete their high school equivalency as they work.

Posted 23 April 2010, 05:42 by Daniel Christadoss