Background

The ILO is hosting this webinar to encourage the use of more innovative methods to advance the fair recruitment agenda. This online meeting will take place on 23 June 2022 (10.30-12.00 CEST).

The exchange of experiences and discussions will also increase the understanding of Behavioural science approaches as part of strategies to prevent recruitment abuses and abuses to decent work, in the aim of informing future interventions designed by stakeholders including ILO staff and constituents, UN, government, private sector, and civil society organisations.

The event will also be an opportunity to reflect on the application of behavioural science and innovation, two workstreams of the UN Secretary-General’s Quintet of Change highlighted in Our Common Agenda as two capabilities that will help accelerate progress towards the SDGs.

Through the Integrated Programme on Fair Recruitment (FAIR, phase II) supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the ILO developed a strategy for engaging employers of domestic workers and increasing their awareness of recruitment-related abuses. Domestic work represents the largest share (24 per cent) of the 16 million people estimated to be in forced labour in the private economy. Many domestic workers who find work abroad fall prey to intermediaries who charge them high fees for recruitment. In 2020, the ILO initiated a new approach, based on behavioural science and immersive experiences, in a bid to influence the market in Hong Kong towards greater demand for fair recruitment practices.

First, a behavioural experiment was carried out in the form of an online randomised control trial (RCT) in collaboration with the University of Geneva to test what message frame can best influence employers of domestic workers in their choice of an agency. This set of behavioural levers then informed the content of a campaign targeting employers of domestic workers.

Second, an immersive experience was created in the form of an online gamified website www.thehiringchallenge.org, produced in collaboration with Rights Exposure. The website is a key milestone of the campaign that places the viewer in the shoes of an employer of domestic workers in Hong Kong. Videos promoting the website were produced using the message frames identified in the behavioural experiment.

Register here!

Key documents

• Agenda_ English.pdf (894.01 KB)