What is the Worker Voice Survey?
Since 2021, LaMP has been implementing a project to strengthen responsible labor recruitment practices within the U.S. H-2A and H-2B visa programs for temporary migrant workers. One pillar of this project is the development of a low-cost, smartphone-based worker survey designed for easy deployment to an unlimited number of migrant workers.
Originally codesigned by LaMP – in collaboration with CIERTO and two large established industry actors – this survey helps audit and monitor recruitment partner performance, gaining internal insights to address challenges and showcase good practices.
Why is it important?
In December 2024, the Department of Homeland Security announced a final rule, introducing new requirements related to H-2A and H-2B worker recruitment. As a result, employers are now required to take active and continuous steps to learn about possible recruitment fee collection by their partners.
This anonymous survey is a proven tool to proactively learn about workers’ recruitment experiences – including potential recruitment fees – that can be quickly and easily deployed at scale. To date, worker surveys have been distributed to more than 15,000 workers across more than 300 H-2A employers. We aim to continue expanding our collaboration with additional industry players.
How to get involved?
This anonymous survey is a low-cost tool that collects feedback from workers on four overarching themes including: 1) fees from middlemen or recruiters, 2) clarity and accuracy of information during the recruitment process, 3) status of travel expenses refunds, and 4) any potential debt from the recruitment process.
Survey deployment takes 6-8 weeks from start to finish. After signing an NDA with our partners, LaMP sends a link to workers through WhatsApp. Workers have around 1 week to answer the survey, after which LaMP analyzes the data and presents the results to partners.
To learn more, find a brief description of this initiative here and a comprehensive report on the methodology and survey results for 2023 here.
This initiative is supported through funding by the Walmart Foundation. The findings, conclusions and recommendations presented here are those of LaMP alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Walmart Foundation.
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