Using Worker Voice Tools to Assess Relationships Between Workers and their Managers

This note focuses on one dimension of how technology-enabled worker voice tools can be used: to gather qualitative data about the nature of relationships between managers and workers or communities at factories, farms, mines and plantations. This is achieved by asking workers and community members relationship-based questions.

Use this method to:

• Quantify and make sense of often subtle, sometimes unexplored, worker dynamics that might impede or enable the achievement of positive human rights outcomes.
• Identify manager or supervisor behaviors that may be undermining responsible workplace programs.
• Explore relationships between workers’ experiences in the workplace and traditional business performance metrics, such as productivity, absenteeism and turnover.