The industry is much more sensitive to workers’ needs today and there are many examples of collective and collaborative efforts being made for the betterment of individual factories, clusters and industry as a whole. One such initiative is being done at Richa Global Exports in collaboration with US based Ann Inc. and supported by BSR (Business for Social Responsibility), NGOs Sanchayan, Delhi and Swastik, Bangalore, where effort is on to educate workers on financial planning and execution for a secure future.
The results are very impressive; while earlier only 30 per cent of the workers had a bank account, now 70 per cent have opted for the same and their salary goes directly into their account. Moreover, the workers now are more aware on financial issues and are saving more. “Initially this project – ‘Her Finance’ was for the female workers only, but as our Gurgaon unit has a majority of male workers, so we offered this scheme to all and the enthusiasm of the male workers was noticeable. They are more positive of a better financial future than earlier after this training,” informed Dinesh Mehra, GM (Finance) and Vijender Gupta, GM (HR & Compliance) of the company.
The project having six modules has been running for the last 7 month and will be completed soon. Financial planning, investment, savings, borrowing, banking are the core parts of this training in which NGOs train the peer group of 50 workers and then these workers further train their co-workers. Labour Link, an NGO working in this area, monitors and takes feedback from the workers; they also offer them incentives like mobile recharge to encourage them to participate.
The upfront company is also working on another project at its Delhi facility with aim of “reduction in energy consumption through increase in efficiency, productivity”. The energy audit was done by Reset Carbon which is a training partner to the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. They observed that wherever energy was being used in excess or being wasted, gave suggestions giving scope for improvements. Now this unit is using piped natural gas rather than diesel.
