Better Factories Cambodia has continued to work closely with the DOSH from MoLVT on the Better Work Academy for national partners called Building Bridges programme. Three separate training sessions focusing on facilitation and problem solving skills were held in 2019.

Building Bridges members include tripartite constituents, buyers, high performing factories and manufacturing groups. Building Bridges participants expressed in survey that Safe Workplace Arrangements and OSH were among the most needed topics to be tackled jointly. To address these challenges, leadership programmes have been implemented for owners, manufacturers, factory management and staff.

“The ‘Building Bridges’ project is bringing together the public and private sectors in a new way, providing participants with a platform to build trust, raise concerns, look for solutions and discuss the future. It can establish channels to discuss a common approach to improve working conditions.” H.E. Dr Leng Tong, Director, Department of OSH, Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training

We have worked innovatively with J.D. United Manufacturing Corporation (JDU), a group covering 15 factories, to provide support for improvement in OSH, which included OSH Leadership Programme in nine factories, as well as the provision of aggregate data on compliance performance.

By engaging manufacturing groups, achieving and sustaining compliance is possible. According to a survey, 75% of the participants felt the training would be useful in their job because it helped them to identify problem-solving techniques.

KEY LESSONS THAT CAN BE APPLIED TO ALL FACTORIES
♦ Identifying problems and their root causes
♦ Preventing is better than problem-solving
♦ Prioritizing issues into specific and actionable tasks before finding the solutions