• DESIGN
  • EVALUATE
  • ANALYZE
  • DISSEMINATE
  • SCALE-UP

Upskilling Factory Supervisors

Can providing soft skills training for manufacturing supervisors improve worker wellbeing and productivity?

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

While the focus on technical skills is crucial, it is often overemphasized at the cost of soft skills such as effective communication, conflict resolution, preventing harassment, stress management, time management, among others. This gap can also play into the problems of psychological, verbal, and physical abuse in factories, negatively impacting workers’ wellbeing. Acknowledging that good managers play a key role in affecting worker satisfaction and wellbeing, and given the importance of effective management in enabling a safe and productive environment for workers, we hypothesize that a key lever firms can use to improve the workplace environment and raise productivity is to invest in the provision of soft skills training.

RESEARCH QUESTION

Can soft skills training empower supervisors to navigate the factory floor better? Can this translate to workers who are more satisfied with and productive at their workplace?

RESEARCH DESIGN

In collaboration with Options & Solutions, a personnel consultancy firm, designed a soft skills training program called STITCH (Supervisors Transformation into Change Holders) for factory production line supervisors (floor managers supervising the work of front-line machine operators and helpers). We conducted an extensive survey of approximately 2000 supervisors at a large-scale garment manufacturer about their managerial practices and styles, workplace behaviors, and personality characteristics. This led us to create our intervention, STITCH, which covers topics such as self-esteem, gender sensitivity, problem-solving, planning work, and preventing harassment at the workplace.

MEASURING OUTCOMES

We found that tenure, cognitive skills, internal locus of control, autonomy, and attention significantly affect productivity. With our intervention, we were able to show that:

  • Supervisors through STITCH were 5.8% more productive up to six months after STITCH concluded.
  • Trained supervisors attain 6% salary growth.
  • Supervisors who underwent STITCH were 15% less likely to quit.
  • Workers in their lines were more likely to receive incentives and bonuses. 
  • The firm saw a net return on investment of 12% by the end of the intervention.

Soft skills not only empower workers, and support them in building pathways to professional growth, but are also a profitable investment for the private sector. GBL Ventures has developed the STITCH tool to further worker development while boosting efficiency and reducing turnover. Visit the GBL Ventures Website to know more.