How Responsible Recruitment Practices Unlock Opportunities for Competitive Market Advantage
Watch the webinar presented by The Packer and EFI featuring a conversation about recruitment risks and best practices with Kenton Harmer, Managing Director of EFI and Norma Encinas, H2A Program Director for CIERTO Global.
Getting recruitment right is meaningful for your workers, your business and your customers.
Knowing and understanding your risks and where you stand in the recruitment process jump-starts your company’s ability to get out ahead of the challenges recruitment brings and unlock competitive advantage opportunities for your business.
“The first mile in the recruitment journey is often the most perilous for workers and the most opaque for employers, who own the risk whether they’ve done the crime or not.”
– Kenton Harmer, EFI Managing Director
Bad Recruitment Means Forced Labor in the Supply Chain
The risk of bad recruitment flows upward. The actions of supervisors, farm labor contractors or other parties involved in recruitment before the worker reaches the farm gate can create blowback for your company and your customers. According to Verité, the top three risks in illegal and unethical hiring practices (illustrated in green on the chart below) can happen during the recruitment phase.
The current labor shortage adds complexity to the issue of recruitment and can create incentive structures that lead to bad practice. The graphic below shows the typical chain of actors that lay between customers and farmworkers. The stars highlight the areas of increased risk. Bad recruitment anywhere in the labor supply chain, even if it occurs well before workers reach your farming operation, results in risks and consequences that will be owned at the production level.
“Labor recruitment is a connected system where the grower and the retail buyer are taking on risk created on the ground.”
– Kenton Harmer, EFI Managing Director
The Shadow of Unethical Recruitment
While the following is an extreme example, it is not an uncommon one. According to an in-progress EFI survey among farmworkers in 25 communities in Mexico that send workers into the H-2A Program, 89% of workers are experiencing unexpected fees in their recruitment.
Imagine a woman being approached in her small community outside of Oaxaca by a family member, acquaintance or someone who just rolled into town. First comes the promise that she can make more in a season than she makes in a full year staying in her community. Then comes the finder’s fee, the passport and document processing fee, the fee for transportation to, over and beyond the border and the list goes on. Often, fees can total in the thousands of dollars.
The worker will most likely need a loan from an informal lender to pay these fees. In her community, that lender could be related to a cartel and the terms of acceptance will be harsh. When it comes time to collect on the loan, if the family can’t pay and sometimes even if it can, the debt grows and the collection methods can include acts of violence against the worker or family.
An Overview of Recruitment Risks
HUMAN AND ETHICAL RISK
As illustrated in the example above, just because a company is not charging recruitment fees does not mean their workers haven’t paid elsewhere in their journey to the farm. Many of the most extreme practices occur upstream of the farm gate and they are just as likely, in some cases more likely, to happen if you use guest worker programs like the H-2A program. Even guest workers who come back year after year could be subjected to these illegal fees.
COMMERCIAL RISKS
Forced labor is currently in the crosshairs of retail customers, consumers, regulators of civil society and the media. Retail buyers’ brands are at stake when a supplier makes headlines for being associated with forced labor, child labor or unethical labor practices.
In the fresh produce industry, as more buyers get on board with support for ethical recruitment — major buyers like Costco and Walmart are already incorporating ethical labor practices into their standards — suppliers can expect to be asked with increasing frequency to demonstrate how they are proactively identifying and mitigating recruitment risks in their workforces.
“Punitive and backward-looking penalties are no longer the full set of commercial risks involved in recruitment and forced labor. Costco, Walmart and other major buyers are making responsible recruitment and the illumination of forced labor a critical part of requirements to sell to them.”
– Kenton Harmer, EFI Managing Director
ORGANIZATIONAL RISK
Recruitment fees affect incentives for the exploited worker in their job performance and engagement level and this can affect your business negatively by compromising food safety, workplace culture and product quality.
For instance, if the worker is most concerned about achieving a high piece rate during harvest in order to repay loans to recruiters, she would be less likely to take the time to stop and report observed red flags for food safety in the fields or to carefully observe the quality of the produce she is harvesting.
Turning Risk Management into Opportunity by Creating a Clean Recruitment Process
Fresh produce suppliers can unlock opportunities by working with partners, tools and strategies to do recruitment right.
Being able to demonstrate credible and practical steps to keeping forced labor out of your supply chain gives you the opportunities to be a preferred supplier, a preferred employer during a labor shortage, and to strengthen food safety levels, product quality and collaborative problem-solving at your operation.
Working With Partners Like CIERTO Global
Working with a partner organization, like CIERTO Global, can give you assurance of a clean recruitment process. CIERTO’s objective is to professionalize farmworkers and work in a transparent recruitment process that generates farmworkers who are committed to their companies and want to return to farms year after year.
CIERTO recruits workers from their communities of origin with the help of trusted local partner organizations, and matches the agricultural skills of a community with the potential job offers through the H-2A Program. Clear parameters, training and resources are provided to the workers before they leave for their contracted positions.
“Through the training modules, workers are provided with tools to reach out to management and human resources to resolve any issues and most importantly they understand their value to the farm and within the supply chain.”
– Norma Encinas, H2A Program Director for CIERTO Global
Recruited workers receive a full description of the job offer, an explanation of the contract they are signing and training customized to their experience level and job offer. The training modules help the worker understand their role in the farms operations and improve the soft and practical skills that will enable them to collaborate with other workers and their management.
The program employs the use of three surveys to allow farmworkers to evaluate the process and give feedback: they are conducted when the worker first arrives at the farm, half way through the contract and again when the the contract is complete and workers are back in their communities of origin. The surveys allow CIERTO to identify any concerns within the recruitment process and make adjustments to training or processes as necessary in real time. The results are summarized and shared with the employer, creating another opportunity for improvement and strengthening of good systems.
“Responsible recruitment can be more expensive than other recruitment processes, but at the end of the day the person that has been recruited ethically and trained will provide a lot more production for your company, the productivity of that worker is going to be way up.”
– Norma Encinas, H2A Program Director for CIERTO Global
Using Available Tools Like the Responsible Recruitment Scorecard
Understanding the size of your risk and how to address it is the first step in reducing risk, enabling you to focus on growing, harvesting or packing a safe and high-quality product.
The Responsible Recruitment Scorecard is a free, interactive self-assessment tool that enables you to identify and understand your own recruitment risks by assessing the labor providers you work with. It can also be used to compare labor contractors. The tool provides directional guidance to mitigate risks before auditors find them on your farm. Results are private and not shared with auditors. Development of the Responsible Recruitment Scorecard is made possible through the generous support of the Walmart Foundation and Humanity United.
Take the First Step
It might feel like an overwhelming goal to ensure responsible recruitment, but it’s critical to get started. Contact CIERTO Global or use the Responsible Recruitment Scorecard. You’ll find market competitive advantage just from being on the responsible recruitment journey.
Recruitment fees aren’t going to disappear overnight, but, improvement will take place rapidly and over time as the industry follows this issue and important players put in credible effort and work with good data and partnerships to get on the continuous-improvement pathway for responsible recruitment.
“The responsible recruitment of workers is an important and complicated issue that isn’t expected to be addressed quickly or easily. We are interested in doing business with suppliers who are learning to understand the complexity of the issue, and to elevate responsible recruitment practices.”
– Keith Neal, Vice President/General Merchandise Manager of Fresh Produce for Costco Wholesale
Other Posts in the People First Series:
Webinar Recap: Intro to the Ethical Charter on Responsible Labor Practices
Webinar Recap: Myths and Realities of Social Compliance
Webinar Recap: Integrating Worker Voice
