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Understanding and learning about decent work situations

This first category involves tools that provide deeper insights in the decent work situation in a given sector or a group of companies. They differ in what is measured, how it is done, and in which settings it can be used.

Decent Work Assessment tool (HIVA-KU Leuven)

Responding to questions about

  • How do workers perceive their decent work situation?
  • To what extent are workers exposed to decent work deficits?
  • How does this compare to views from employers and worker representatives?

Data-collection

  • Quantitative & qualitative
  • Mix of open questions (narrative) and 60 closed questions in 8 domains of decent work
  • Mix of factual and perception questions
  • Stories and signifier questions to enrich contextual analysis & capture hidden issues
  • Assesses beyond minimum labour standards
  • Interviews, surveys 
  • Aggregation to scores for each of 8 domains of decent work

Target groups

Workers

  • Dependent & independent workers
  • Formal & informal employment 
  • Smallholder farmers

Other

  • Employers
  • Worker representatives

Required expertise: medium

Required resources: medium

Main limitations

  • Interviews of 60-90 mins
  • Comparative approach comes at cost of some flexibility 
  • Decent work scan based on worker voices: can be affected by ignorance, fear, initimidation

Sources: www.decentworktoolbox.be/DWA  

Fair Work Monitor (CNV Internationaal)

Responding to questions about

  • How do workers perceive their decent work situation?
  • To what extent are workers exposed to decent work deficits?
  • To what extent do companies comply with due diligence legislation? 

Data-collection

  • Quantitative & qualitative
  • Around 100-120 closed questions (basic & cascading questions), and some open questions around 5-6 domains of decent work
  • Mix of factual and perception questions
  • Interviews, focus groups
  • References to aspects of human rights due diligence
  • Assesses beyond minimum labour standards
  • Executed in collaboration with local trade unions 
  • No aggregation to a single score

Target groups

Workers

  • Dependent workers
  • Formal & informal employment 

Other

  • Worker representatives

Required expertise: medium

Required resources: medium

Main limitations

  • Long interviews
  • Requires presence of local trade unions
  • Less appropriate for SMEs
  • Limited to employees (dependent workers)

Sources:  https://www.cnvinternationaal.nl/en/topics/special-topics/100-fair-work-monitor  

Decent Work Questionnaire (ILO)

Responding to questions about

  • How do workers perceive their decent work situation? 

Data-collection

  • Quantitative
  • 31 closed questions in 7 domains of decent work
  • Perception-based questions
  • No reference to minimum labour standards
  • Aggregation to one overall score 
  • Interviews (self-assessment)

Target groups

Workers

  • Dependent and independent workers
  • Formal & informal employment 

Required expertise: medium

Required resources: medium

Main limitations

  • Only closed questions, often stated in general phrasing: limited contextual and specific information (eg. exposure to specific OSH problems)
  • No factual questions (such as the availability of a contract, …) 
  • No references to specific areas of attention: child labour, forced labour, …

Sources: https://labourdiscovery.ilo.org/permalink/41ILO_INST/1s2ok2m/alma994986093202676 

Holding companies accountable against a standard of decent work

These instruments measure the decent work situation against a specific standard of decent work. They range from quick self-assessment instruments for workers, such as the Decent Work Check, to full audits, such as SMETA audits based on the ETI Base Code, which might take more than one day per company. A more soft approach was developed by Enabel DRC in the form of a decent work charter, complemented by an assessment framework and a guidance note (more information will follow). 

Decent Work Check (Wage Indicator Foundation)

Responding to questions about

  • How does your decent work situation compare to minimum national and international standards?

Data-collection

  • Quantitative
  • Self-assessment questionnaire with 60 closed questions in 13 domains of decent work
  • Factual and perception-based questions (yes/no)
  • Assesses against minimum labour standards 
  • Self-assessment / interviews

Target groups

Workers

  • Dependent workers
  • Formal & informal employment 

Required expertise: low

Required resources: medium

Main limitations

  • Limited to employees (dependent workers)
  • Limited to minimum standards
  • Closed yes/no questions: no contextual information 
  • Focused on accountability, less on understanding/learning

Sources: www.decentworkcheck.org 

Social audit tool – SMETA audit based ETI Base Code (Sedex)

Responding to questions about

  • Is a company in compliance with the ETI Base Code? (based on core ILO Labour Standards, national legislation and international frameworks)

Data-collection

  • Quantitative & qualitative
  • ETI Base code: Code of conduct with 28 statements clustered in 9 domains of decent work
  • SMETA audit assesses compliance against ETI Base Code with check list of 60 pages (1-4 days per company)
  • Closed and open questions (a few hundred questions)
  • Assesses against minimum labour standards
  • Interviews, focus groups, & document review 
  • Aggregation to decent work scores (methodology not transparent)

Target groups

Workers

  • Dependent workers
  • Formal & informal employment 

Other

  • Employers
  • Worker representatives

Required expertise: high 

Required resources: high

Main limitations

  • Requires substantial resources, time and expertise
  • Focused on accountability, less on learning or understanding 
  • Oriented towards companies in the formal sector

Sources: https://info.sedex.com/smeta-audit-solution-brief  and other social audit instruments: https://standardsmap.org  

Monitoring & evaluation at intervention level

Information needs for monitoring & evaluation processes tend to differ from those related to research, national statistics, or auditing. First, the data that is collected, needs to be directly linked to the target groups. The information needs to help the intervention team and the local partners to learn about progress, and to review the strategies where required. Finally, the data-collection, assessment and reporting process needs to be pragmatic to avoid spending too much time on measurement.

Policy brief: How to measure job quality in value chain development projects (ILO)

Responding to questions about

  • How to measure job quality in value chain development projects?

Data-collection

  • Quantitative & qualitative
  • 5-step process to measure job quality (can also be used for decent work)
  • Generic process: data-collections depends on priorities of intervention
  • Secondary sources, expert opinions, complemented with interviews or surveys
  • Defines first priority areas, non-priority areas use proxy indicators
  • Direct and indirect effects

Target groups

Workers

  • Dependent & independent workers
  • Formal & informal employment
  • Smallholder farmers

Other

  • Employers
  • Worker representatives

Required expertise: medium 

Required resources: medium

Main limitations

  • Generic process, which requires adaptation to specific context
  • Quality of measurement will depend largely on expertise to design the specific M&E system
  • Relies more on secondary data sources and expert opinion

Sources: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_emp/---emp_ent/---ifp_seed/documents/publication/wcms_817888.pdf 

Decent Work Assessment tool (HIVA-KU Leuven)

Responding to questions about

  • How do workers perceive their decent work situation?
  • To what extent are workers exposed to decent work deficits?
  • How does this compare to views from employers and worker representatives?

Data-collection

  • Quantitative & qualitative
  • Mix of open questions (narrative) and 60 closed questions in 8 domains of decent work
  • Mix of factual and perception questions
  • Stories and signifier questions to enrich contextual analysis & capture hidden issues
  • Assesses beyond minimum labour standards
  • Interviews, surveys 
  • Aggregation to scores for each of 8 domains of decent work

Target groups

Workers

  • Dependent & independent workers
  • Formal & informal employment 
  • Smallholder farmers

Other

  • Employers
  • Worker representatives

Required expertise: medium

Required resources: medium

Main limitations

  • Interviews of 60-90 mins
  • Comparative approach comes at cost of some flexibility 
  • Decent work scan based on worker voices: can be affected by ignorance, fear, initimidation

Sources: www.decentworktoolbox.be/DWA  

Contributing to national statistics about decent work

This category contains a wide variety of labour force surveys that assess specific aspect of working conditions, the labour market, etc. The surveys are often nation-wide and use representative samples. They are most often not explicitly framed under the decent work concept.

Labour force surveys (national governments, EU, ILO)

Responding to questions about

  • What is the composition of the labour market in country X?
  • How do key indicators of decent work score across different sectors and job categories?
  • How many workers are active in the formal or informal economy in different sectors?
  • ….

Data-collection

  • Quantitative
  • Long battery of closed questions
  • Concepts in questions following statistical definitions
  • Large (sector-wide or national) and representative samples
  • No aggregation with link to decent work concept

Target groups

Workers

  • Dependent & independent workers
  • Formal & informal employment
  • Smallholder farmers

Required expertise: high

Required resources: high

Main limitations

  • Not based on decent work framework, but on specific concepts (job quality, OSH, informality, discrimination, …)
  • Unit of analysis is individual worker, not their workplace/company
  • Generating sectoral or national statistics, mostly descriptive
  • Long questionnaires (more than 60 mins)
  • No or limited qualitative data
  • Complex in analysis and interpretation

Sources: Example: https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/en/surveys/european-working-conditions-surveys-ewcs  

Specific decent work themes

A wide variety of instruments exists that assess specific dimensions of decent work, for example, related to (living) income/wage, gender discrimination, occupational health and safety, the platform economy, etc. A few examples are presented below.

Measurement of income in formal and informal economy (WIEGO)

Responding to questions about

  • How do I measure different dimensions of income in the formal and informal economy?
  • What are the pros and cons of different approaches to income measurement?

Data-collection

  • Quantitative & qualitative
  • Comparison of different methodologies to measure income in the formal and informal economy
  • Both quantitative and qualitative approaches

Target groups

Workers

  • Dependent & independent workers
  • Formal & informal employment 

Required expertise: medium - high

Required resources: medium - high

Main limitations

  • Complexity depends on method selected 
  • Requires rigid measurement protocols and representative samples

Sources: Example: https://www.wiego.org/publications/measurement-employment-related-income-concepts-data-sources-and-test-methods  

Living wage/income calculations (Wage Indicator Foundation)

Responding to questions about

  • How do you calculate a wage or income that allows a worker to sustain his famly and cater for basic educational, health, accommodation, transport and other needs? 
  • How can this income/wage be made dependent on the location where the person lives/works?

Data-collection

  • Quantitative
  • Methodology based on cost of living survey with 10 dimensions
  • Wage Indicator calculations are available for many countries and regions
  • Quantitative survey, complemented with document analysis

Target groups

Workers

  • Dependent & independent workers
  • Formal & informal employment 
  • Smallholder farmers

Required expertise: medium

Required resources: medium

Main limitations

  • Applying methodology is rather complex: more realistic to purchase data from Wage Indicator Foundation

Sources: https://wageindicator.org/salary/living-wage 

Occupational safety & health (ILO)

Responding to questions about

  • How to measure occupational health and safety in OSH programmes based on 5 KPIs?

Data-collection

  • Quantitative & qualitative
  • Survey-based approach with baseline and endline
  • Describes 8 steps for data-collection and analysis
  • Includes specific guidelines for each KPI 

Target groups

Workers

  • Dependent workers
  • Formal & informal employment 
  • Smallholder farmers

Other

  • Employers

Required expertise: medium

Required resources: medium

Main limitations

  • Approach needs to be adopted to specific context of interventions 
  • Approach is customised for ILO OSH Flagship interventions

Sources: https://www.ilo.org/publications/collecting-data-and-measuring-key-performance-indicators-occupational