Poor working conditions in global supply chains is a big problem. One of the most profound global changes over the past few decades has been the offshoring of labour, whereby high cost workers in developed countries have been substituted for low cost workers in the developing world. While this has some positives for consumers (as it's brought down prices) and companies (as it's enabled them to expand margins) in the developed world, it has also led to very poor employment conditions in the developing world which are far from acceptable.

&Wider has developed a simple and cost effective way of tackling the problem. The company has developed a direct worker reporting tool which enables businesses to understand the employment conditions within their large and fragmented supply chains. Their expertise is in both gaining the trust of the workers and in phrasing questions in such a way as to get relevant, actionable answers. The questions are put to workers via their mobile phones and answered on the keypads. Typically, they will do 2-4 call cycles for the site every year, allowing the client to both identify problems and monitor progress, using a simple 'traffic light' dashboard.