Gathering Information from Workers

We need to get reliable information about the workers’ experiences and what organization processes can be strengthened.

Here are some basic guidelines to prepare for gathering information from workers:

Choosing the workers to interview is an important step. The Assessor should have already established the profile of the workers that the UoA has based on the information from the pre-assessment form. 

Note that the management should be able to provide the master list of all employees, but the Assessor should choose which workers to interview. In doing so, the assessor should aspire to have representation of workers across the following groups or types:

• Workers' jobs, roles, and duties

• Employment status, e.g., seasonal, contractual, outsourced, permanent, regular, etc.)

• Nationality  or citizenship, e.g., local and foreign workers

• Gender

• Length of service or number of years/months workers have been with the company/UoA

• In addition, if the UoA has a large number of migrant workers, it is ideal to interview workers with or from different labor brokers or recruitment agencies.
  

Other considerations:

• Choose a number to interview roughly equal to the square root of the total number of workers.

• Use a mix of individual and small group interviews.

• Interview about half the workers individually, and the other half in small groups.

• For group interviews, have discussions in a mix of groups from 2 to 5 workers.