Fair Wear workplace training programs have evolved to be used throughout several steps of the Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) cycle followed by our member brands. Workplace training is a crucial part of the prevention, mitigation and remediation of risks in garment factories.

For many years, Fair Wear has worked with local service providers and organisations to implement both general and country-specific training modules for preventing, mitigating and addressing human rights risks in garment factories. The core aim of our training has always been to raise awareness on labour rights at the workplace and provide workers and factory management with the knowledge and skills to push for improvements in their working environment and relations.

Workplace trainings have a number of different functions in the HRDD cycle. Not as separate tools, but as crucial elements of prevention and mitigation of risks and remediating violations. Fair Wear believes that workplace trainings are most effective when brands are involved, in parallel, in learning moments in which they learn about human rights risks in the garment industry and reflect on what their impacts might be on the working conditions in their supply chain.

Workplace training can be used by brands in different elements of their HRDD responsibility: as part of labour rights risk prevention and as part of remediation for labour rights violations. The Fair Wear Onboarding is the first step on the pathway to prevention and remediation. Fair Wear sees awareness raising on labour rights, social dialogue, as well as on internal and external grievance mechanisms including the Fair Wear helpline, as a mandatory first step for all brands and suppliers.

Suppliers are introduced to the basics of human and labour rights in the first year of business relationship with the Fair Wear member brand. Common foundational knowledge among brands and suppliers is crucial to prevent, mitigate and remediate risks and violations. Therefore, building this common knowledge should be at the very basis of any brand-supplier-worker relationship. The different target groups are made aware of the basic labour rights, grievance mechanisms and social dialogue by a step-by-step approach, starting with brand staff, and followed by factory management and HR/CSR staff, worker representatives and general workers. By providing more (online) resources, stronger connections with local (capacity building) organisations and more focus on peer learning/resource material, Fair Wear hopes to increase the outreach of its current training efforts.

Following the Fair Wear onboarding, brands and suppliers jointly decide, based on found risks at the factory level, what other interventions and/or trainings can best suit the needs of the supplier. Examples of such initiatives includes setting up an anti-harassment committee or implementing modules to strengthen communication between management or workers.  

We recruit local, qualified, independent experts for our trainings. Additionally, we promote local training programmes and support local capacity-building organisations to develop programmes in their area of expertise. Our role is to connect those organisations matching their capabilities to factories where needs and risks have been identified.

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