We are proud to be announced as the recipient of the Partnerships for Purpose Award at the 2025 Shared Value Awards for the impacts of our Family-Friendly Factory program.
We are proud to share we have been announced as the recipient of the Partnerships for Purpose Award at the 2025 Shared Value Awards.
The 2025 Shared Value Awards Partnerships for Purpose category sought applicants that were building transformative collaborations between businesses, NGOs, and/or governments that drive positive impact on key societal challenges by leveraging each partner’s unique strengths, creating innovative governance structures, and evolving based on shared learning.
Our Family-Friendly Factory program encapsulates transformative collaboration. The program delivers benefits to all stakeholders, from factory owners to front line workers and even the wider community – delivering impacts based on identified needs.
In 2016, we worked closely with factory management to understand some of the issues they were facing; high turnover rates, lower retention rates and staff shortages during their peak production season in summer. We learned that many workers, although happy with their positions, needed to leave their jobs to return to care for their children in their hometowns during the school summer holidays.
Through further research we uncovered that childcare was the no.1 reason why workers were leaving their jobs. ‘Left behind children’, is a phenomenon which when workers migrate domestically for work and are not able to bring their children to live with them. This occurs across rural China, due to the ‘Hukou’ system, their children are not permitted to be educated in a state they were not born in. Today, according to recent data, there are just under 10 million ‘Left behind children’ in China alone, but we see similar social issues occurring in Vietnam and other significant manufacturing economies.
The program was developed in direct response to these identified needs, affecting the livelihood of both the workers and their employers and identifies three pillars key to the well-being of any workforce with carer responsibilities.
At the end of 2022, the program set a 3-year ambition to support 30,000 children by the end of 2025 through 100 Family-Friendly Spaces and publicly recognising 50 factories as Family-Friendly.
In addition to social value, we know there is huge commercial value in the program, factories participating report improved worker retention, lower training costs and attraction levels which translates into cost savings in the long term. Below we share repeat improvements in worker turnover rates at two factories since participating in the program:
Factory 1: worker turnover rate at 19.7% in 2016, dropping to 12.8% after the first year of participating and now at 5.1%
Factory 2: worker turnover rate at 26% in 2020, dropping to 10% after the first year of participating and now at 2.3%
In combination with other key metrics such as training costs, worker-related injuries and attraction levels both factories shared with us their estimated cost-savings since participating.
Factory 1: estimates US$450,000 in cost-savings
Factory 2: estimates a staggering US$621,000 in cost-savings
The program is able to leverage ESCP’s in-depth knowledge of worker well-being as well as the relationships we have built with the factories in our program to introduce and implement new initiatives to improve their offering and reputation as an employer.
UNICEF are experts in developing policy and providing support for families all over the world. Working together, we are able to action and implement these policies directly where they are most needed.
Support from The LEGO Group, Spin Master, Macy’s, Superdry, Deckers, Mattel, Crayola, Melissa & Doug, Hasbro, TMS and TÜV Rheinland. enables further scaling to share the benefits of the program to factories all over the world.
The program allows businesses to give back to the workers making their products while supporting an initiative that creates business value for factory management.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the success of this program, from the key funders of our 3-year ambition – to the pioneering managers who signed up to the small-scale pilot program in 2016.
Thank you to Shared Value Project, Shared Value InitiativeHong Kong and the judges for the recognition – we are so proud of this achievement and will continue to grow and scale the impacts of the program.
We aren't stopping here, now celebrating 10 years since the launch of our first childcare program we've launched our biggest summer yet for the program - with nearly 60 childcare spaces in operation this year alone.
Find out more about the Family-Friendly Factory program here and contact us for information on how you can support the initiative.
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