ANKARA (ILO News) - Under the Labour Inspection and Guidance Project being conducted by the International Labour Organization (ILO), workshops were held in Ankara addressing the issues of “Strategic Compliance Planning” and “Standardization of Workflows for Labour Inspection and Guidance”.

The workshops organized under the project, which is being supported financially through the European Union Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA-III), hosted inspectors from the Directorate for Guidance and Inspection (DoGI) of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, as the beneficiary of the project. The sessions were moderated by Mr Frédéric Laisné-Auer, ILO Labour Inspection and Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Specialist, and Ms Valkyrie Hanson, Lead for Transformative Technology for Decent Work and Technical Specialist for Strategic Compliance of the Labour Inspection and Occupational Safety and Health Branch (LABADMIN/OSH) of the ILO.

The “Strategic Compliance Planning Workshop” hosted under the project, which has the official title of “Strengthening Workplace Compliance through Labour Inspection Guidance and Social Dialogue Project”, was held at the Ankara Point Hotel from 19 to 21 February 2024.

It was organized to support the planning of labour inspection and guidance services to ensure they address the most urgent deficits in the provision of decent work in the priority sectors, which have been identified on a risk-focused basis; to strengthen the capacity of labour inspection and guidance services in Türkiye so that new risks arising from the dynamic nature of working life – such as the increase in non-standard forms of employment, global supply chains and new business models – can be addressed; and to contribute to the achievement of sustainable compliance goals by examining the different factors, stakeholders and compliance interventions affecting workplace compliance.

During the workshop, the ILO Approach to Strategic Compliance Planning for Labour Inspectorates prepared by the LABADMIN/OSH Branch of the ILO Headquarters was introduced to the labour inspectors employed by the Directorate for Guidance and Inspection (DoGI) of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.

Attended by Mr. Yasser Hassan, Director of the ILO Office for Türkiye, as well as officials from the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, social partner representatives and labour inspectors, the project activities were introduced, and the purpose and methodology of the workshops were explained in the first sessions. The following sessions were held with the participation of labour inspectors from DoGI and ILO experts with particular focus on strategic planning, and served as a platform for group discussions of compliance issues and the interventions carried out to date in the sectors identified as priorities in terms of decent work deficits. Group works were conducted throughout the workshop addressing the issues of “labour inspection procedures”, “key issues and objectives”, “the factors affecting compliance”, “stakeholders”, “different compliance interventions” and “developing a strategic compliance plan”.

The strategic compliance model and plan developed for the DoGI during the three-day workshop will be piloted in sectors to be determined later in the project.

“Standardization of Labour Inspection and Guidance Workflows” Workshop

As part of the ongoing project activities, a “Standardization of Labour Inspection and Guidance Workflows” Workshop was held at Ankara Point Hotel from 22 to 23 February 2024, with a view to increasing the technical capacity of guidance and inspection services in Türkiye and to support their digital adaptation.

Since the project aims to improve DoGI’s web-based infrastructure in support of the more effective monitoring of guidance and inspection activities and the more efficient collection of labour inspection statistics, there is a need to determine the necessary scope of the digital transformation and to identify any related needs. With this goal in mind, the initial steps taken during the workshop included mapping the workflows of guidance and inspection procedures, and creating draft workflows, involving labour inspectors employed by DoGI working in collaboration with expert consultants.

The group works conducted during the two-day workshop aimed to interactively validate the created workflows with thr technical support of Mr Frédéric Laisné-Auer and Ms Valkyrie Hanson of ILO, and contributions from the 44 participating labour inspectors. The goals of the workshop were to increase the efficiency of the work processes of DoGI and to create standardized workflows.