Starter Kit. Idea 446 of 500. Cluster 23
Safety-audit services for workplaces, with a public rating
The mechanism, from the book
The single largest unused asset in the country is sitting at home, and the reasons are practical, not attitude.
The first step
Draft a one-page checklist covering lighting, toilets, transport, a harassment policy and night-shift arrangements, and ask the owner of one shop, office or factory to let you score them against it for free. Write the result as a plain rating, with what would raise it. The proof is an employer who asks to display the rating, or pays for a follow-up visit.
- Who pays first
- An employer struggling to recruit women, who pays for an audit because a public rating tells applicants and their families the workplace is safe.
- What leaves today
- Women and their families turn down jobs they cannot judge as safe; a published rating is the proof that lets them say yes.
Ask first
- Data Protection Authority. Ask what you must do before publishing workplace ratings that mention people or complaints.
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask how to register a rating and audit business.
Check before you spend
Confirm each workplace agrees in writing to be scored and published, that your checklist is applied the same way every time, and that no worker is named.
Find out these three numbers
- Would a factory pay to be checked and shown as safe?
- How many women would choose an employer by its safety score?
- How long does one fair check take to do?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"None of that is a value. All of it is checkable, which is the only property that matters."
A safety promise means nothing. A published score that anyone can check means a great deal.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.