CORPORATE MEMBERS'
LEARNING NEEDS PROGRAMME

September 2001

(incorporating comments from ETI Board meeting
September 2001) 

CONTENT

• Content
• Background to This Document
• How ETI Learns
• Different Members, Different Needs
• Generating New Knowledge - Pilots Plus
  • Types of Pilot
  • Suggested Pilots 2001-2004
  • Research
  • Working Groups
• Capturing Existing Knowledge
  • Current Activities
  • Think Pieces
  • Sharing Experiences
• Communicating Learning
  • Training
• Ways of Working
• Next Steps

 

 

BACKGROUND TO THIS DOCUMENT

1. ETI is a learning initiative: its success will ultimately be judged by its ability to generate and share learning. This paper identifies future learning needs of corporate members and the means for meeting them.
    
2. A unique feature of ETI is that all members commit to generating and sharing learning. One of our strengths is that different caucuses work with and learn from each other. However, the learning needs of the each caucus can be different, and with limited resources it is necessary to take one step at a time. Therefore, the focus of this document is the learning needs of corporate members which is where there is greatest need and demand at the present time. There will be similar exercises to identify the needs of trade unions and NGOs in due course.
    
3. This document is the result of extensive consultation with ETI's corporate members. Following interviews with a cross-section of corporate members, a first draft of this paper was presented at the Food and Non-Food group meeting in July. In August, all corporate members were invited to comment and there was a 60% response rate. A second draft was then circulated for comment to NGO and trade union caucuses. This document contains the views expressed during that consultation, and incorporates comments made at the ETI Board meeting in September 2001.
    
4. The document provides a brief rationale for ETI learning (How ETI Learns), and then sets out a three-prong learning strategy (New Knowledge, Existing Knowledge and Communicating Knowledge). The document then discusses how the strategy will be implemented (including the role of members and the secretariat), concluding with key elements of implementation.

The programme is 'product-oriented', and repeatedly corporate members expressed frustration that ETI was not yet making its learning available in usable, accessible ways. The programme complements ETI's 2001-2004 strategy, and provides a framework for meeting learning needs during that period. It will need regular review and revision because needs and priorities will change: that process will be developed as part of implementing the programme. Certain areas of work will also need to be presented to the Board on a case by case basis (e.g. pilot projects, research terms of reference). But the programme does provide a framework that brings cohesion to members' and the secretariat's work which in itself should help enhance the quality and quantity of learning. The ETI Secretariat has already started to implement the programme.

 

 

HOW ETI LEARNS

1. There are three prongs to ETI learning:
   1. Generating new knowledge (pilots, working groups, research)
   2. Capturing existing knowledge of the membership acquired through pilots and individual experiences
   3. Communicating learning to the membership and other audiences
       
2. All of this is already happening, but corporate members would like to see more. This can be achieved through …
   1. Activities:
      • New pilots, including a wider range of pilots than hitherto
      • Establishing multi-caucus working groups on priority themes
      • Commissioning research on key issues
      • Events and publications to stimulate thinking about new ideas and alternative viewpoints
      • An information system able to identify, capture and disseminate learning
   2. Ways of working:
      • Understanding and articulating what we know and need to know
      • Increasing inter-caucus partnership
      • Timely delivery of learning products
      • Capturing learning from ETI activities
      • Making learning available to members
      • Continual learning not just end results
      • Clear roles for the membership and secretariat

 

 

DIFFERENT MEMBERS, DIFFERENT NEEDS

3. ETI has a responsibility to its members and the general public. The Learning Needs Programme will focus on members' needs for the time-being, and in the first instance those of corporate members given that changes in corporate behaviour are essential to realising ETI's objectives.
    
4. Amongst the corporate members, needs vary according to:
   1. industry/sector
   2. countries of operation
   3. length of time involved in ETI
   4. amount of investment already made in ethical trading
       
5. Those needs are set out in the following sections. Sector-specific needs should be fairly obvious (e.g. a prawn sourcing pilot will be most relevant to certain companies in the Food Group). The needs of newer members are often quite specific, and have been highlighted using shaded text.

 

 

GENERATING NEW KNOWLEDGE - PILOTS PLUS… 

Types of Pilot

6. Pilot projects have been the main catalyst for ETI joint learning to date. The DFID review of ETI stressed the need to reconsider what constituted a pilot project, and we are proposing to expand beyond the multi-year, single country, single industry projects conducted to date. In future, it is proposed that the form and focus of pilots should be kept flexible, and should be tailor-made to meet whatever learning needs are prioritised by members. The specific pilots suggested by corporate members to date can nevertheless be divided into four categories:
   1. Contemporary: the multi-year, single country, single industry approach to learning about monitoring.
   2. Country-specific: a multi-year, inter-industry/sectoral approach to implementing core labour standards as part of supply chain management in a given country.
   3. Progressing the code: focusing on applying the Base Code in circumstances that have been identified as potentially problematic. This could be industry-specific or multi-sectoral, multi-year or shorter as circumstances require.
   4. Issues-based: a shorter activity focusing on a particular aspect of implementing the Base Code, involving one or more country and one or more industries.
       
7. To date, all pilot projects have involved members of each caucus. The same tripartite approach should underpin future pilots, although the practicalities of this need to be considered given ETI's agreement to a considerable increase in the number of new pilots over the next three years. Every ETI member is required to participate in a pilot and if membership grows according to our projections, the implications of this will also need to be considered for implementation and management.
    
8. A new structure for implementing and overseeing pilots is therefore important, and Fiona Mabbott has drafted a document on how to set up a pilot. It is also essential that the secretariat have systems for identifying and reviewing members' priorities on a rolling basis, and that the secretariat's own work programme responds to this.
    
9. This document recognises but does not attempt to resolve the above issues. There is need for further discussion about how pilots are to be implemented, but those issues do not need to be settled for this programme to proceed. It is neither necessary nor desirable to identify all of the pilots for 2001-2004 right now, and review of the management/oversight of pilots should be part of implementing this programme. All we are doing at this stage is to provide a framework for prioritising pilots in the short to medium-term, based on the types of pilots suggested by corporate members (see below). In all cases a terms of reference and a pilot working group will need to be established before further progress can be made. Each new pilot will require ETI Board approval before it can be formally established. 

Suggested Pilots 2001-2004

10. Corporate members have suggested the pilots set out below, although this should not be interpreted as a definitive list (see above). Some of them are already being discussed, although none has been confirmed. Other caucuses have also suggested ideas (e.g. gender dimensions of ETI), but these have not yet been included. As a way of prioritising, the secretariat will invite members' to form working groups on the following:

 

Research

11. Pilot projects may involve research, but what is meant here is discrete work commissioned to inform ETI members, requiring skills and resources not readily available within the membership.
     
12. Two priority pieces of research have been identified for ETI funding, and TOR will be submitted to the Board this year. These are:
    1. Impact assessment of the Base Code for different stakeholders
    2. Cost-benefit analysis of implementing and complying with the Base Code
        
13. Additional research on gender dimensions of codes of practice and small producers are under consideration. There is a need for a mechanism for identifying and approving future research areas, and this will be developed as part of programme implementation. 

Working Groups

14. Working groups are an important part of developing and sharing knowledge amongst members. The groups provide a forum where members from the different caucuses can come together to discuss issues in detail and find ways of taking them forwards. Often they are an initial step in deciding whether there is a need for a pilot project.
     
15. Three working groups are active at present:
    1. Training assessment
    2. Child labour
    3. Code violations
        
16. There is also an Annual Report working group which oversees the reporting process, and may wish to consider how to optimise learning through this process in the future.
     
17. New working groups are being considered all the time (e.g. invisible producers in the supply chain).
     
18. There is a need to get the discussions of these working groups to the general membership on a more regular basis (see Communication below).
     
19. As the number of working groups increases, there may be a need to develop a process for establishing such groups and allocating budgets to their activities. This will be reviewed as part of the programme implementation.

 

 

CAPTURING EXISTING KNOWLEDGE

20. Using what we know provides the greatest opportunity for accelerating ETI members' learning, and is probably where there is greatest wastage at present. To some extent, this is already being addressed (see Current Activities below), but more could be done (see Think Pieces and Sharing Experiences). 

Current Activities

21. There are several ongoing activities to share existing knowledge, several of which address the needs of corporate members:
    1. Annual Reports and the process around them are a key means for sharing information and learning what other members are doing.
    2. ETI Workbook - practical, hands-on ideas for those involved in developing an ethical sourcing strategy, implementing a code of conduct and setting up systems for inspection. Amongst other things it addresses member-identified learning needs on:
       • Putting in place monitoring systems
       • Best practice for site visits
       • How to engage with local stakeholders
    3. Assessment of auditor training and members' auditing needs (findings due February/March 2001)
    4. An auditing methodology - a handbook for suppliers and others involved in auditing core labour standards based on experiences in Zimbabwe. (To be published early 2002)
    5. Lessons from pilots - the experiences of the China and South Africa pilots are being written up, along with an overview of pilot learning to date. (Contact Fiona Mabbott for details)
    6. Country Profiles - country profiles covering legal, cultural and institutional information necessary to work on ethical trading in a given country are a high priority for members. The ETI website goes some way to dealing with this, but it is not enough. This is an area that requires more exploration, including through the suggested pilot project (see above). 

Think Pieces

22. Some ETI members have knowledge that is important for other members to find out about. An obstacle to date has been hesitation about disseminating information before it has been thoroughly tested, partly for fear that this will be seen as ETI policy or recommendation. ETI 'think pieces' representing ideas or work in progress are a way to address this.
     
23. Think Pieces can be prepared by members from each stakeholder group and/or the secretariat; in some cases, we may also want to have the thoughts of people beyond ETI. It is proposed that they be the basis of members-only seminars backed up by short publications (working papers), although not just limited to the official representatives. In no particular order, ideas for Think Pieces to date are:

 

Sharing Experiences

24. Think Pieces are one way of sharing experience amongst the membership, but they need to be complemented by other activities, namely:
    1. Inter-company contact
    2. Inter-caucus contact
    3. Training (see Communicating Learning below)
        
25. The assumption by some members that others won't want to share their experiences appears to be false, although this needs to be proven in practice and any implications of the Competition Act understood.
     
26. It also needs to be stressed that companies do not want inter-company contact to be a substitute for inter-caucus contact, and would like to hear trade union and NGO ideas about how this can be developed further.
     
27. Simple ways of starting this process (some of which have already happened to an extent) include:
    1. Logging and mapping what the membership is doing
    2. Signposting where to learn and seek advice within the membership
    3. Visits to companies and others to see their training programmes
    4. Visits to companies to see how they manage ethical trading
    5. ETI secretariat open days so that members can learn about a day in the life

 

 

COMMUNICATING LEARNING

28. What we learn is only as effective as the way we learn it. This means ETI needs a learning culture where knowledge is communicated in an accessible and timely way across the membership. This raises a number of issues explored further in Ways of Working below. But corporate members share the view that the media is as important as the message when it comes to learning, and have suggested the following:
    1. Human interaction is the best way of learning - collaboration through pilots, and facilitation of seminars, open days and similar events are essential, although they need to be backed up by written materials. 
    2. Training is vital - induction courses, training in how to use workbooks, training related to auditing [1], and training in what is ethical sourcing are all important activities for ETI to take forwards. 

Training

29. Training is a major element of the Learning Needs Programme. ETI has already started work on assessing auditor training (see Current Activities above), but new members in particular want to know what ETI is about and how they can get maximum value from their membership.
     
30. More thinking needs to be done about ETI training, but the following activities have already been identified:

 

 

WAYS OF WORKING

31. There are several longer term issues about how we create a learning culture: these include:
    • Turning learning into usable 'products' for members
    • Understanding and articulating what we know and need to know
    • Capturing learning from ETI activities
    • Systematising learning from pilot projects
    • Making learning available to members in timely, accessible ways
    • Developing a framework for sharing experiences
    • Increasing inter-caucus partnership
    • Fostering continual learning and sharing interim lessons, not just releasing end results
       
32. These lessons from previous experience need to be taken on board when we come to operationalise the Corporate Learning Needs Programme, but it is not necessary to do more than flag some of the issues at this time.
     
33. One major issue will be to establish clear roles for the membership and secretariat. The secretariat cannot be the learning hub to meet all needs: it does not have the capacity, but more importantly it doesn't have the experience that members have. Also, the more the secretariat takes on on behalf of members, the greater the risk that members will become more like subscribers, and one of the unique features of ETI will be lost.
     
34. Nonetheless, there is likely to be a mismatch between identified needs and actual capacity. The Corporate Learning Needs Programme set out here represents only a partial attempt at prioritisation: final prioritisation and scheduling will take place during 2002 (see Next Steps below).

 

 

NEXT STEPS

35. The following elements are necessary to take the Corporate Learning Needs Programme forward:
    • Invitations to establish pilot projects on the listed topics
    • Draft TOR for research projects
    • Scheduling of activities
    • Consultation with other caucuses on their specific needs
    • Agree pilot project selection and management processes
    • Board approval of individual pilot project and research TOR
    • Ongoing review of learning needs

 

See also:

ETI Activities: research projects & training programme

ETI Resources