Shimmy Upskill & Empower 5.2M Workers

Our Solution

Shimmy Upskill & Empower 5.2M Workers

One-line solution summary:

Shimmy Upskill is a joyful, gamified approach to help garment workers gain the technical skills needed for Industry 4.0.

Pitch your solution.

We use games and accessible design principles to teach workers the machine and technical skills they need to stay relevant for Industry 4.0. In 2018, Shimmy piloted the Proof-of-Concept Upskill app with garment workers in Bangladesh and Indonesia. Since then, we’ve refined the application and trained over 786 workers. The brands we currently work with are focused on Bangladesh and we see this Challenge as a great opportunity to pilot the new version of Upskill in Indonesia and build a scalable model to reach the country’s 5.2M workers.

Two problems:

1.    Garment manufacturing grows more automated by the day. Workers are not upskilled at pace with automation.

2.    Female workers are not considered for jobs running advanced machines.

Solution:

1.    Training experiences designed to help female workers upskill.

2.    Leveraging brand partnerships with H&M, Under Armour, and VF to rollout Upskill training program to female workers in Indonesian factories.

Film your elevator pitch.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

Is your solution working in India and/or Indonesia?

What specific problem are you solving in India and/or Indonesia?

As the ready-made garment manufacturing (RMG) industry becomes increasingly automated, the 5.2 million garment workers in Indonesia, a population predominantly comprised of women in low-paid positions, needs scalable upskilling and reskilling solutions to help keep pace with the automated future of Industry 4.0.

Automation disproportionately impacts women, pushing them out of employment first, as

1.      The male breadwinner model gives men priority for jobs alongside the cultural belief that women lack the innate technical ability of men.

2.      Factories favor workers who can operate different types of machines and women are often overlooked for mechanical training.

3.      Women often assume more household responsibilities and cannot stay late to attend trainings.

4.      Women often lack formalized education, leaving them without marketable skills to find other work when displaced from factory jobs.

The disruption to the global supply chain is not only a concern for workers at risk of being left behind, but also to employers and countries whose GDP is dependent on garment exports.

https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2020/08/10/indonesias-garment-industry-in-crisis/

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Our target population is female garment workers in Indonesia, many of whom are underserved due to, according to the Fair Wear Foundation, a combination of factors including low wages, poor health and safety standards, insufficient protections of workers’ rights, and gender-based violence and harassment in the workplace.

If granted the opportunity through this challenge, we will conduct skill needs assessments with workers to identify their skill gaps in both technical skills and digital machine literacy levels. From there, we’ll evaluate what’s required by garment factories and match our intervention to career pathways that a worker can advance into today on the road to Industry 4.0.

Our proof-of-concept pilot showed that our interface was effective in training Indonesian garment workers, so we are not starting from scratch. For this series of pilots, we’ll take care to understand how to design the experience for Indonesia with feedback directly from workers and factory owners. From there, we’ll iterate on the Upskill app solution and training experience.

(Source: “Price competition is driving many factories to move to areas with lower minimum wage requirements, which is pushing wages down across the industry. The government is not enforcing existing laws on freedom of association, overtime, and legal employment contracts, and there’s a pressing need for better health and safety standards across the board. Workers in garment factories across the country report experiences of workplace violence and sexual harassment.” https://www.fairwear.org/programmes/countries/indonesia/)

How does the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge?

Indonesia and India are two of the largest textile producers in the world and each country is dependent on the garment sector for exports. As Erik Brynjolffson from MIT states, “Countries dependent on the garment sector will need to 'leapfrog' traditional methods for reskilling workers in order to transition workers in time.”

We design for accessibility to unlock truly equal access to training. Our unique user interface and novel uses of AI have helped hundreds of completely digitally illiterate workers leapfrog into technical training quickly. Our methods for training workers and scalable and sticky and can be broadened to serve workers across manufacturing segments. Trainees from our first pilots all moved into higher-tier manufacturing jobs and remember all lessons in chronological order 18 months after the training session. Beyond teaching the technical skills they need to operate multiple machines, we often partner with soft skill training programs so workers have leadership training alongside technical skill development and would be open to doing that within this challenge.

We also do something that should not be underestimated in this challenge: we show female workers what’s possible. Through TikTok, facilitated WhatsApp community groups, and in our trainings, we illuminate stories from women in higher-paid, technical roles in the supply chain just 1-2 levels above where our trainees are now. Being able to relate to someone like them is inspiring and reassures them that Industry 4.0 jobs are in their reach with a little bit of training.

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Sarah Krasley, the CEO and Founder of Shimmy.