Our Projects

Garment factories in India rarely control for temperature or pollution. How important is it in driving productivity and improving the work environment?

• Replacing fluorescent lighting with LEDs reduced energy consumption by roughly 85%, reducing the average indoor temperature by roughly 2.4°C.
• Additional profit from increased worker productivity was 5X larger than energy cost savings.
• Exposure to air pollution significantly reduced worker productivity, reflecting both worker welfare reductions, and lost profit for the firm.

S.T.I.T.C.H. (Supervisors' Transformation Into Change Holders) is a soft-skills training for line supervisors on factory floors. It addresses issues of abuse and harassment and team productivity to improve workplace outcomes and the general work environment.

• The content of the training was drawn from an extensive survey of the managerial practices at Shahi.
• Using econometric methods, we identified aspects of managerial quality which are the most important determinants of productivity.
• The experiment covers 2002 supervisors - 1039 receiving the treatment and 963 part of the control group, receiving the treatment in the second phase.

Young female garment workers (FGWs), especially migrants often have low blood hemoglobin levels, resulting in persistent weakness and fatigue, affecting their energy levels, and overall physical and mental wellbeing. How do we improve adherence and take-up of iron tablets amongst anemic women?

• 43,000 FGWs across all Shahi factories in South will be tested for anemia.
• The appropriate dosage of iron supplementation tablets will be administered to the anemic women over a period of 3-6 months.
• The method of iron tablet administration will be varied across randomly chosen groups to understand factors that drive adherence and take-up.

Through randomized controlled trial we are trying to understand the impacts of rural training centers on women, their households and their communities.

• The female labor force participation rate in India fell from 36% in 2005-06 to 24% in 2015-16.
• We are randomizing the placement of 10 rural training centers by Shahi Exports across 20 regions in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh to study the impacts of migrant employment opportunities.
• Preliminary data collected through Participatory Rural Appraisals in 1300 villages across 53 taluks in Karnataka shows that for 57% of women the primary activity is working on the family farm.

What combination of skills and traits make for a good manager, specifically in a manufacturing setting in a developing country? We matched two years’ data on daily, line-level production from 6 garment factories to find out how various managerial traits of a supervisor affect worker productivity.

• Traits studied were - tenure, cognitive skills, autonomy, personality, control, attention, and relatability to workers.
• The tenure and cognitive skills of a supervisor are key drivers of a worker's productivity.
• Traits which are not easily observable, like relatability to workers seem to be undervalued in pay overall.

Indian garment companies often hire rural women, and their relocation from villages to cities is a significant transition for the workers and the company.

• Through randomized controlled trial covering 7,500+ residents in 80 hostels, we studied how housing quality affects the subjective well-being and workplace outcomes of migrant garment workers.
• There were objective improvements in safety, cleanliness, and congestion, and reduction in subjective well being and mental health of those workers whose expectations regarding the hostel takeover were set high before the takeover.