How to Create a Worker Safety Hotline That Really Works

A worker hotline that is well designed and utilized by employees not only helps managers find harm; it also can allow managers to move from a reactive to a proactive approach to workplace abuse. The authors’ research on dairy farms in Vermont offers four simple recommendations to help increase utilization:

1. Hotlines need to be accessible, at the times, in the languages, and through the mediums that workers prefer.
2. Hotlines need to institute serious protections against retaliation with immediate, biting penalties for non-compliance.
3. Workers need to see fast responses to concerns, and quick resolutions when they make valid complaints.
4. Informal complaint resolution can be more effective, faster, and better oriented to workers’ needs. Nevertheless, retaining the option of a formal process is essential to guarantee complaint process integrity.

One popular strategy to preserve worker safety is implementing a hotline that workers use to register complaints. But too often, hotlines go unused, not because employees don’t have grievances, but because employees don’t trust them — a lose-lose for employer and employee alike. Employees need mechanisms to keep themselves safe, and employers need a healthy and engaged workforce.

We studied one effective hotline to see what might be different and replicable about it. The hotline is part of the enforcement arm of a private, supply chain monitoring effort, the Milk with Dignity Program (MD), a member of the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Network. Unlike other hotlines, the MD program hotline is well-utilized, fielding more than 460 calls over 30 months from a population of approximately 260 workers. This success is even more impressive because the MD program serves a workforce largely comprised of economically precarious, migrant workers, who are less likely to complain than other workers.

We analyzed detailed records of MD complaint line calls, assessing the type and number of concerns raised by workers, as well as investigation and resolution processes. Interviews were also conducted with 14 stakeholders from the MD program. We found that the MD model counteracts common hotline challenges by being easy for dairy workers to use and resolving complaints quickly, unlike many complaint mechanisms that can draw out investigations for months and even years. Specifically, this hotline differs from others in three key ways.

Access

Hotlines can be challenging for employees to access: Either workers don’t understand their purpose, they are not staffed at convenient (non-working) times, or workers, like the general public, prefer to text or message rather than using an 800 number.

The MD program solved these problems with two low-cost initiatives.

First, workers are instructed in using the hotline annually in a worker education session. These paid sessions are led (in Spanish) by fellow workers who now work on the MD Program’s education and advocacy team, while staff from MD’s monitoring arm are on hand to translate the sessions for English speakers. As a result, workers build direct connection with the auditors staffing the complaint line during these sessions.

Second, workers can call or text complaints via WhatsApp, which is popular among a Vermont farmworker population that has limited cell service but available internet. The hotline is staffed around the clock, seven days a week, by a bilingual staff.

Supervisor Deterrence

Many worker hotlines sit quiet because workers fear retaliation for speaking out. Vulnerable workers often worry that their hours could be docked, their wages reduced, or their position eliminated. This type of direct retaliation is concerning, but our research uncovered another way supervisors discourage (even unknowingly) workers from reporting incidents: Many employers simply do nothing to address the concerns that are raised, often because they fear that making changes will be too difficult or costly to implement.

The MD program’s enforcement structure shakes farms out of this status quo thinking. Employers receive a premium in exchange for participation in the MD program; those who engage in or allow retaliation against complainants face suspension from the program, and loss of this premium. Furthermore, the MD program requires employers to engage with and respond to all valid complaints — doing nothing is not an option. As a result, farms develop a proactive approach to complaint resolution, and become less resistant to change. The MD hotline also rigorously protects complainant confidentiality. Taken together, these measures build employee trust, as workers see that raising concerns can yield tangible improvements.

Transfer of Burden

Worker hotlines inherently place some responsibility for monitoring conduct in the workplace on the employees themselves. Complaint processes can be lengthy with little reward, and disillusionment among workers — a pervasive feeling that speaking up would not lead to meaningful change — is a problem for hotline utilization.

The MD program counteracts this challenge in two ways: First, MD staff take on the primary burden of investigation and resolution, involving complainants only when necessary. Second, and perhaps most importantly, the MD program drastically shortens complaint investigation timelines: Records show the median investigation was one day, and full resolution of a complaint took about five days. This compressed timeline is due in large part to how the MD program handles complaints.

While MD staff retain the option of resorting to a more formal investigative complaint process, they also broker conversations and collaborative problem-solving between workers and employers where possible, drawing on personal relationships with workers and supervisors cultivated during farm visits. By shortening and informalizing the resolution process where possible, the MD program helps employers avoid lengthy investigations and work disruptions, while also quickly addressing worker concerns and fundamentally shifting the grievance burden.

The Upshot for Managers

The success of this hotline model offers four important, generalizable lessons for managers seeking to establish effective grievance mechanisms:

1. Hotlines need to be accessible, at the times, in the languages, and through the mediums that workers prefer.
2. Hotlines need to institute serious protections against retaliation with immediate, biting penalties for non-compliance.
3. Workers need to see fast responses to concerns, and quick resolutions when they make valid complaints.
4. Informal complaint resolution can be more effective, faster, and better oriented to workers’ needs. Nevertheless, retaining the option of a formal process is essential to guarantee complaint process integrity.

Dairy farms are a prime example of an industry context where precarious workers may hesitate to utilize a grievance mechanism, but the success of the MD hotline suggests these barriers can be overcome. In fact, in our research the managers we spoke with emphasized that turnover, a key labor cost for the dairy industry, plummeted after the MD hotline went into effect and workers began sharing concerns. Building on this success, the hotline model — developed by the MD Program and other WSR Network members — is now being implemented in a variety of workplaces, including Hollywood to address sexual harassment.

Ultimately, a worker hotline that is well designed and utilized by employees not only helps managers find harm; it also can allow managers to move from a reactive to a proactive approach to workplace abuse.