Hi I'm Yu Bei Tsai interested in fast fashion and labour right issue.
Do you know how many laborers are suffering under the Covid pandemic?
Fast fashion industry has a rapid growth in recent years with many counter voices arise.
Labour issues has been extremely controversial for a decade, especially the biggest one Asos.
How much exactly do Asos earn? A lot. Even after the outbreak of Covid 19 Asos was still making
huge profits by putting workers in risky danger while many other competitors shut warehouses to
keep workers safe. it is important for companies to grow both responsibly and sustainably,
not only for protecting workers but also make up for reputation. So what exactly are the problems
of Asos during Covid? The GMB survey shows 98% of workers felt unsafe at work in March last year,
besides a suspected outbreak of coronavirus occurred in the same warehouse.
Moreover the company was called to boycott after 70 workers being made redundant in April last
year. Our main objective is to figure out the ways to balance profitability and labour rights
simultaneously for a company to maximize the long term profits. The actions could be divided into
two stages: urgent action and long term. Let's move on to the first action in the short term.
Firstly under the unexpected situations, setting up new norms and safety precautions are necessary.
Then the company should keep communicating with workers to ensure they are satisfied
with the regulations. Second educate the knowledge about personal hygiene
and update the latest news and information about pandemic. Getting a lot of information
would help the whole company to progress more smoothly and reduce employees fear.
Third the company should care with both physical and mental will being of workers
the company can offer life assistance or mental support for those who need.
Besides providing opportunities for workers to switch the job or remote working will be helpful.
First in the aspect of working environment in the factory it is necessary to clean regularly,
provide enough amount of personal protecting equipment, and educate workers not together
in groups. Protecting workers health and safety is one of basic ways to increase worker satisfaction.
The last thing i would suggest is to rise workers paid or give them rewards to motivate them.
The purpose of rewarding employees including motivation
along with expectancy theory and goal-setting theory employees work harder when they are
clear about the target the reward and the additional value they could gain.
For the long term practice casualisation is the central thought the company should bear in mind
that flexible work style and life balance are new trends in the future even if the pandemic is over.
Also managing a more flexible supply chain is critical to deal with any possible situation.
From the above strategies how could laws benefit
Asos? Most of the actions mentioned above could make employees feel being valued and involved
which could increase their engagement according to the model of the drivers
of employee engagement thus labour rights and profitability could be improved effectively.
According to the penna's hierarchy of engagement, trust is one of crucial portions to increase
engagement and practicing corporate social responsibility activities can lead to trust by
employees. At the same time they may be helpful to enhance the corporate reputation. To sum up,
caring for our people and creating economic value could be done at the same time; Asos could create
more positive value both tangible and intangible by caring more about their employees.