Assessing the Impact of Better Work
Better Work has the potential to make a significant impact on the lives of workers and their families, the performance of enterprises and the economic and social development of countries involved.
To ensure effective operation and intended outcomes, Better Work uses rigorous tools for monitoring and evaluation in all programme countries. The programme has also developed a methodology for net impact analysis, which offers the ability to analyze the causal links between project interventions and outcomes for both enterprises and workers.
A multidisciplinary team from Tufts University in the United States is leading the impact measurement effort. In addition to having developed tools for monitoring and evaluation in all programme countries, they have launched a study in parallel to the rollout of Better Work Vietnam. This is an unprecedented opportunity to measure the business and development case for improving labour standards. Over five years, the study will follow up to 700 factories and their workers in the Ho Chi Minh City area, before, during and after Better Work interventions.
As well as collecting new information, the research will use existing data from household and enterprise surveys, which allows additional opportunities to verify the impact of the programme. Qualitative research will supplement these efforts and seek to explain how and why factories change their human resource practices in ways that promote the improvement of labour standards.
The aim of monitoring and evaluation efforts is to document improvements and measure impact across various indicators, including progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. Some key indicators that Better Work will track are:
Enterprise Performance
- Labour standards compliance rates at factory and industry levels
- Improvement in compliance over time
- Worker turnover
- Labour-audit costs saved
- Production capacity
- Relationship with buyers
Economic Development
- Export growth by value and volume
- Employment
- Wages
Human Development
- Worker household income
- Worker remittances
- Educational attainment
- Mental, physical and reproductive health