March 2001 Insights Issue #36

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Code compliance? Participatory social auditing in Zimbabwe

Consumers and retailers increasingly demand social accountability from producers, particularly if goods are imported - hence the introduction of standards or Codes of Practice covering chemical, environmental and social issues. How can matching the criteria for social performance be measured? How can consumers and retailers be sure that producers are complying with codes of practice?

Is social auditing the answer? Unlike a technical or business audit - a checklist system requiring a simple 'yes' or 'no' to the existence or not of items and systems - a social audit seeks to measure the behaviour and attitudes of employees at every level of authority and how these impact on the company's overall social performance .

Crucially, a social audit also aims to create awareness and facilitate behavioural change amongst workers and management by identifying why problems arise and how to solve them. Can social auditing achieve these goals? In Zimbabwe, a locally-managed pilot project to test methods for inspecting workplaces, shows that to arrive at an authentic and accurate picture of a company's social performance, participatory social auditing is essential.

Participatory methodology is used to gather data from a wide range of people within a community including the most marginalised. As a means of raising awareness and of facilitating behavioural change, why is participatory social auditing more effective than other forms of social auditing?

The Zimbabwean experience relied upon an on-going process of regular inspections and monitoring, rather than a single 'snapshot' view of a company. The participatory social audits produced good quality data from all stakeholders and got to the bottom of issues that companies could not have identified on their own. Semi-structured interviews, for example, elicited information on sensitive issues such as sexual harassment and discrimination while focus group discussions encouraged female workers, who seldom participate publicly with men, to discuss openly issues such as child labour. Furthermore, the participatory approach:

• allowed workers and management to share ideas and perceptions freely

• enabled joint planning and decision-making

• allowed data collection from every 'category' employee producing quantitative and qualitative information and making cross-checking possible

• was time and cost effective: to ten percent of employees in an organisation could participate in one day at a total cost of Z$22,000

• necessitated the use of female as well as male social auditors conversant in local languages and aware of local cultures, given the high (80 to 86) percentage of (often illiterate or semi-literate) female workers.

Important issues that need addressing arose out of the pilot project precisely because of the nature of the social auditing methodology. Serious implications for company social policy and management systems include:

Language problems
Low levels of literacy limit many workers' understanding of verbal and written communication, unless in the vernacular at an appropriate level. Women, often semi-literate or illiterate and in the majority, lose out.

Communication breakdown
Information is traditionally passed down through the foreman to the workers. Most male employees have permanent posts and constitute the bulk of senior staff both supervisory and management, and embody culturally-determined attitudes of superiority. Better representation by and for every category of worker and management, including opportunities to share and discuss information is crucial. Female employees, mostly seasonal workers with limited access to communication channels, need this more than most.

Sexual discrimination
An increasing imbalance in the male-female ratio the higher up the organisational hierarchy, a total absence of female staff in senior management, and minimal female representation in middle management or supervisory worker positions is evident. Sexual harassment of female workers by their superiors is common yet no system or policy exists to lodge complaints or prevent incidents from recurring.

Di Auret
8 Garlands Ride
Mount Pleasant
Harare
Zimbabwe
T + 263 (4)884314 / 091 216 723
dimike@pci.co.zw