Stage 03
The level of policy engagement with data work and its problems is unevenly distributed across the world. Companies can look to international guidance on topics like labour welfare, responsible business practices, and human rights to think about how to build better workplaces. Beyond looking outwards for guidance, companies should engage with external initiatives to assess conditions and practice, discuss labor issues, and design improvements.
Receptive governance
The level of policy engagement with data work and its problems is unevenly distributed across the world. Companies can look to international guidance on topics like labour welfare, responsible business practices, and human rights to think about how to build better workplaces. Beyond looking outwards for guidance, companies should engage with external initiatives to assess conditions and practice, discuss labor issues, and design improvements.
Integrate rights frameworks and charters into company governance
Companies need to adopt frameworks and take steps to uphold human rights in the workplaces they manage. They should conduct human rights impact assessments and release publicly available reports.
Openness to third-party inspections
In addition to publishing publicly accessible reports discussing their labour practices, companies should develop the practice of hosting external assessments of working conditions and socioeconomic trends of data work. It should be possible for external parties representing labour, civil society, or the state, to attempt research and assessments focusing on data workers without interference or hindrance from businesses.
Auxiliary standard: When companies open their doors to external parties for reasons like research or assessment, they need to enable the visiting party to choose how they conduct their work and interact with people. Companies need to refrain from attempting to control or influence the information or testimonies external parties can access.
Lasting collaboration
A growing number of voices are talking about the risks and problems data workers face. Data work has been associated with issues like low pay, unpaid labor, uncertainty in getting paid work, precariously short contracts, intense work pressure, and adverse effects on health and mental well-being. Directly engaging workers and unions is key to understanding problems within and beyond the workflow. Such engagement can help address labor conditions in ways that are useful to workers and improve the workflows driving the business.
Work with labor stakeholders
Formally acknowledge collective organizations and engage in negotiation efforts with them. Companies need to be ready to form and implement agreements with stakeholders like unions. Workers must be safe from company-side penalties or retaliation for participating in or initiating collective action.
Co-design a pay system for remunerating effort, not tasks
Companies should co-develop a process with the workers for remunerating the basic effort involved in tasks, with tasks’ “correctness” no longer being the defining criteria. Through this protocol, the workers must be given a chance to negotiate the wages as per the amount of effort needed and skills committed in completing the tasks in question.
This standard applies to the entirety of the compensation possible for a worker, including, but not limited to, base pay, bonus and incentive pay, and hazard pay. Companies need to conduct this co-development process with workers at least once a year.
They should also open up discussions whenever they introduce new kinds of tasks and roles to the workforce.
For example, if a data work company starts taking content moderation contracts, they should initiate discussions on how earnings will be calculated, regardless of whether one such meeting has already been held that year.
Sustainable work targets
Companies need to have a well-defined process for how they set the “quotas” or “targets” workers need to meet within a particular time period (in an hour, in a day, by the end of the week, and so on). Workers and businesses need to work together to set targets such that workers are not at risk of suffering from adverse effects like burnout, worsening worse stress, and health conditions.
Co-designed targets can be seen as the “optimal workload” that lies between ensuring that everyone can earn substantial amounts of pay, and that company quotas are not causing worker distress or putting their well-being at risk.
Transitions into full employment
For long-serving workers, companies need to create and provide the option for them to transition from a contractor position to full employment. Workers should also be able to seek letters of service from the company that attest to their work experience and possibly offer commendation.
Routinely consult workers about changes and issues
Establish consultation mechanisms where companies discuss key issues, like pay, and co-design solutions and changes. Workers must not be penalized, disciplined, or called out for attempting to raise issues, discussing changes, and calling for action.