Transparency in 24 hours
Nitin Spinners Limited is one of the largest spinning mills in South Asia, listed on the National Stock Exchange in India and they have gone live with our worker voice app. Within 24 hours, sufficient data was flowing to provide detailed information on freedoms, health and safety, pay, hours and conditions in their factories, direct from the workers.
Why has Nitin Spinners taken the worker voice app?
Nitin Spinners has an excellent reputation internationally with customers, and also in its local environment. They have a close-knit workforce with strong ties to the business and a well-developed HR system including internal grievance mechanisms and policies that meet international requirements.
The HR department is staffed by a professional team, which also operates a company-wide HR portal that all employees regularly use to communicate with the business, ensuring that HR policies are translated into culture and practice day-to-day.
Our worker voice app is a strong supplement to their existing internal systems. Of course, the HR team is strongly supportive, and is keenly interested in the data. No business is perfect, no surprises are expected – and a confirmation via the collective worker voice is welcome. But:
The main reason for implementing our worker voice technology is to enable the company to communicate its social capital and values better to its customers domestically and internationally across the 60 countries to which it exports.
This allows Nitin Spinners to translate its investment in social capital and social systems into simple values that its customers can measure and then compare. Our social score is an international standard based on actionable data that workers provide directly to us, in real-time and continuously.
With a high social score based directly on the worker voice (3rd party data, verifiable, independent), Nitin’s social capital credentials are supported and communicated efficiently across all its markets.
And of course, they also appreciate that this works both ways – international customers increasingly expect to see this level of transparency in their supply chain. As an early adopter of the worker voice technology, Nitin’s reputation for innovation and as a leader in its industry is further enhanced.
How does the worker voice app work?
Workers download the app on their mobile phones from the Google Play Store, or they access the app via tablets provided on site. Workers choose their preferred language and register – without having to provide personal identification data.
Then, each time workers use the app, they respond to questions about the workplace. It takes a minute and is amazingly easy to do. With 1000s of workers responding anonymously and continuously, we get real-time data on all aspects of the workplace which we can translate into valuable social scores that can be used internally and shared with customers and the market.
Find out more about our worker app: here.
How did the launch go?
After some brief training sessions with the HR team on 11th January 2022, the worker voice app went live and was rolled out across the two main sites:
The data volumes allowed us to provide almost immediate, anonymous and collective feedback on workplace conditions.
Within 48 hours, we had 8,290 data points covering our panel of 56 topics, provided directly by the workers.
10 days later, we already have over 50,000 data points – with around 5,000 new data points now being provided every day.
Workers respond whenever they choose, and as the mills run 24x7 with three shifts, responses are received at all times of day.
Instant results
An example live report from our dashboard (numbers are blurred for confidentiality):
Individual questions are grouped into dimensions so that the data is easier to understand at a high level – with great amounts of detail available at the click of a mouse – down to the average levels of responses against individual questions. The data is presented in a way where it is not possible to identify the responses of individual workers, even by inference.
What does this early data mean?
Worker scores range from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best. Numbers are blurred in the tables to preserve the confidentiality of the data and because, at this stage, this is just raw data, starting from the moment that the worker voice app went live. Any conclusions drawn from early data have to be treated with great care.
As usage of the app ramps up, the information that we can provide gets more accurate.
After typically 6 to 8 weeks, we can start to provide fully-moderated social scores which can be shared with customers and also compared by the company and by its customers across industries and countries.
Early data is indicative only.
Against a given question, we show the average of the worker score and a measure of the level of consensus across the workforce. Nitin Spinners early results based on raw data are good. Workers confirm good levels of satisfaction with:
the facilities provided
levels of safety, and
grievance and worker feedback processes.
They get paid on time, and they get paid what they are owed. Toilet facilities are sufficient and clean enough, and the quality of management is good. They get sufficient breaks during the day and plenty of support for their needs in work and also more widely.
In common with many factories, workers highlight areas that can be improved from their perspective, such as:
more control over their hours
higher pay
but the extent of dissatisfaction is not dramatic and these are typical comments that can be expected from most workforces. Of course, these are areas for consideration and pressure on hours may also reflect temporary labour shortages stemming from the current COVID environment.
The consensus numbers
The raw consensus numbers (a measure of the extent to which workers are agreeing with each other) suggest that better insights will be achieved via moderation of the data using statistical techniques. We categorise workers based upon their response patterns in order to get a better sense of the underlying issues, but the categorisation steps require data to be collected over a longer period (6 to 8 weeks).
Following moderation, the results will then allow us to highlight the social capital and standards of the business and, to provide data on which areas might benefit from increased attention by the management.
The social score: customers of Nitin Spinners
As the worker voice app continues to be adopted across the workforce and further time elapses, we provide a moderated social score for the workplace and for each of the dimensions of the workplace, which are also tracked daily allowing trends to be measured.
Social scores are standardised measures. They can be shared with customers and compared to other workplaces, regardless of geography and business line. Our worker voice app is already live in other countries, factories and industries. This is the main value that the worker voice technology delivers and the main reason for both factories and their corporate customers to implement it.
Connecting workers directly to customers via the social score enables Nitin Spinners to communicate its social credentials to its customers via 3rd party, verifiable and actionable data.
About Nitin Spinners
Nitin Spinners Limited is one of the largest spinning mills in South Asia and it is listed on the Bombay stock exchange. With clients in over 60 countries, ISO9001 certified and a production capacity of 75,000 tonnes of yarn a year over 2 large sites and supported by 6,000 employees – it is a very impressive business.
We thank Mr Nolkha, Managing Director and Promoter of the company. He invited our team to implement our worker voice technology in Nitin Spinners, recognising instantly the power of connecting workers in the factories directly with his customers, domestically and across the 60 countries to which he exports.
With his support, and the support of his capable management team, our worker app has moved to live operation across his workforce quickly and easily – delivering almost instant results that can already be communicated.