Studying the impact on worker well-being of incorporating 'reporting escrows' into grievance and resolution systems for workplace misconduct

The Foundation's Evidence for Action initiative was designed to support investigator-initiated research projects that support the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's work with a Culture of Health.Under this grant the investigators will employ an RCT to study an innovation to an independent grievance reporting and resolute system (the Helpline) -- the incorporation of a reporting escrow. The researchers will randomly assign garment factories in Bangladesh to: (1) a control condition, (2) to the Helpline's status quo system, or (3) to the Helpline's status quo system plus a reporting escrow. There will be 90 factories per treatment arm. Funding from RWJF will be used to fund treatment arm 3, which entails the reporting escrow (funding has already been secured for arms 1 and 2). The researchers will study the Helpline and the escrow's effects of reporting labor issues, including SH, and on workers' mental well-being, as well as its effects on factories' internal capacity to resolve issues and on worker absenteeism. Researchers will also measure the change in perceived social norms and acceptability of different behaviors on workers and the actual incidence of labor issues for factories in the long run. Evidence from this study could substantially improve the design of reporting escrow systems and increase the probability of take-up and success.