Ilo evaluation

1. Introduction

1.1 Country Context and Contextual Developments

The most important country contextual developments are presented below:

• 
  The historical and rapid economic growth process in China has come to an end in 2014 and in 2015 growth has dropped to 6.9% and performance is further decreasing in the second part of the year. This reality affects the private sector and SME’s have an increased need and interest to invest in improving productivity and profitability rates to be able to remain in business. On the other side of the coin, the risk of losing impact also becomes bigger because more companies go bankrupt and will not continue with SCORE implementation. To what extent this already is affecting the SCORE project is not known;
  
• 
  Global economic integration of Chinese companies in international supply chains is continuing and supply chains reach out to an increasing number of larger companies and SME’s. Pressure to comply with international market access requirements is increasing. Metro Group Buying (MGB) (Phase II) and COOP (Phase I) pilots of SCORE in China clearly take place against this background of increased interest in corporate social responsibility and this trend doesn’t bypass China. The China pilot experiences in this field are also well known in all other SCORE countries.
  

1.2 Key partners in SCORE implementation
At present, the key partners in SCORE are:
Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MoHRSS): At the ministerial level MoHRSS participates in the NTAC. With respect to implementation of SCORE, the cooperation is with the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS).

State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS): The cooperation between ILO and SAWS is good and intensive.

China Enterprise Confederation (CEC): With CEC, cooperation is established at the national level and at the level of Chongqing. The national CEC has a training department and it plays a role in promoting and marketing SCORE. Cooperation with CEC in Chongqing is intensive and SCORE reaches out to many members in this city. CEC at both national and Chongqing level are providing trainers for SCORE.

TUV Nord, TUV Rheinland, NewAsia, CTPM, SGS: ILO works with a number of national and international certifying and quality management companies to provide trainers and training courses for SCORE. With four companies trainers are already deployed in provision of training. With SGS the provision of training is still in preparation and a ToT with SGS was provided against full cost-recovery.
ETI (INDITEX, GAP and Pentland), BSCI (MGB): These international business networks in Corporate Social Responsibility and ILO have engaged in partnership, where lead buyers in international supply chains (COOP and Inditex, GAP and Pentland) provide a part of the cost of SCORE training and services to be provided to their suppliers in China. The specific cost-sharing arrangements depended on specific partner arrangements. These partnerships in international supply chain provide promising perspectives for institutional and financial sustainability of SCORE training provision, although until at present no full-cost recovery of direct training costs is achieved in the ILO-BSCI PPP, but in other international supply chains full-cost recovery was achieved.
1.3 National Tripartite Advisory Committee
The national tripartite committee is composed of CEC, SAWS, MOHRSS, ACFTU, SECO, NORAD and it meets on a semi-annual basis. Until June 2015, 7 meetings were realized.
All tri-partite partners are presented in the NTAC but CEC (employers) and SAWS (government) are also very active partners in the SCORE project in China. ACFTU (workers) is not participating actively in the project although it is sometimes benefiting from training activities in SCORE.
It was not possible to meet with ACFTU during the China country visit, because ACFTU was at the time of the evaluation visit involved in a difficult legal process. The evaluators did meet with ACFTU representatives at the company level. Although ACFTU is developing into a more professional trade union organization, in practice and at the company level it does not establish an independent voice of workers, because the ACFTU unions at the company level are usually led by the HR manager at the company level.
1.4 Activities, outputs and outcomes since start of SCORE Phase II
The realization of activities against planning is presented in the Workplan smart-sheets of SCORE. The smart-sheets are actualized until mid 2015. The smart-sheet results of China were analyzed for implementation rates and are presented in the table below:

Output 1: Sub-sectors and clusters selected (where applicable)	50%			50%
Output 2: Industry Association and training institutions trained in marketing, selling and organizing SCORE training	57%		29%	14%
Output 3: National capacity available to replicate the training program	20%	40%		40%
Output 4: A locally adapted, gender-mainstreamed edition of the SCORE-training materials available		33%	33%	33%
Output 5: Robust M&E information and reports regularly available	20%	40%		40%
Output 6: Service providers trained to deliver	50%	8%		42%
Output 7: SMEs trained on SCORE Modules 1-5 on a demand-driven basis	18%	18%		64%
Output 8: Documentation and dissemination of good workplace practices is available		33%		67%
Output 9:  Policy makers, labour inspectors and social partners have increased	25%			75%
Output 10: Social marketing campaigns to stimulate demand for workplace improvements and change attitudes toward workplace cooperation (where applicable)

Legend: Green=completed; yellow=in progress; red=delayed; white=not yet started or not planned

The table above shows that progress of the SCORE projects against planning is quite well on track, but it also shows that still a significant part of the activities (in white) still needs to be started and completed. Only on two outputs delays are reported and this is on output 2 (training on marketing and promotion of SCORE) and output 4 (the production of a gender-mainstreamed version of the SCORE training materials).

On output 7 (provision of training to SME’s) it is visible that still a large number of SME’s need to be reached with training. The bottleneck of weak promotion and marketing here is not the only one. Also the limited number of trainers and certified trainers is causing challenges for the SCORE project in China.

The realization of outputs is presented on smart-sheets. Until June 2015, the following outputs were realized (between brackets is the percentage of Females):

	Target June 2015	Actual June 2015
Objective 1: Industry associations and training
Nr. institutions embedding SCORE Training in their SMEs service portfolio	4	4
% training cost covered by non-ILO resources	40	50
Nr. of national institutions or MNEs sponsoring/paying for SCORE	7	7
Output 1: sub-sectors and clusters with high decent job creation potential and strong
Nr. of clusters selected (geographic areas)	5	5
Output 2: Industry Association and training
Nr. of MoUs signed by IAs/training institutions	5	4
Nr. of reps of IAs/training institutions trained (M/F)	35 (60%F)	36 (56%F)
Nr. of business plans for SCORE Training developed by IAS/training institutions	4	2
Output 3: National capacity available to replicate
Nr. of national Expert Trainers available (m/f)	4	2
Presence of a national centre of excellence for SCORE	0	0
Objective 2: Service providers deliver effective
% of Modules delivered with medium or high independence	Medium: 70 High: 15	Medium: 71 High: 29
Output 4: A locally adapted, gender-mainstreamed edition of SCORE-training
Nr. of Modules gender-mainstreamed and adapted to sector and country	2	3
Output 5: SCORE M&E system established and up-to-date
Nr. of monthly/quarterly reports submitted on time	18	17
Nr. of incomplete/incorrect data sheets in M&E database	0	0
Output 6: Service providers trained to deliver
Number of trainers certified in SCORE module 1 (m/f)	10 (60% F)	0
Output 7: SMEs trained on SCORE Modules 1-5
Number of SMEs trained on Module 1 (M-owned/F-owned)	95 (10%F)	101 (12%F)
% of SMEs taking up more than one module	30	57
% of participants rating training as good or very good	75	96
Immediate Objective 3: Increased awareness of responsible workplace practices
Nr. of partner initiatives promoting responsible workplace practices as a result of ILO awareness raising	2	2
Output 8: Documentation and dissemination of good workplace practices is available
Nr. of case studies documented	16	16
Nr. of national disseminating events	0	0
Output 9:  Policy makers, labour inspectors and social partners have increased awareness
Nr. of policy makers, labour inspectors and social partners trained (not in ToT/E) (M/F)	300 (30%F)	309 (23%F)
Nr. of NTAC meetings held	7	7

The table above shows that implementation of SCORE in China is on track when comparing realization with targets.
Outcomes reported on the M&E online platform until 20 December 2015 are presented below:

% SME's reporting on one or more key indicators	8%
Average # EIT meetings/month	3
Average # EIP projects completed	48
Average # gender-sensitive practices	2
Average # employee suggestions/month	21
Average % change # grievances	-82
Average % change defect rate	-12
Average % change energy usage	2
Average % change absenteeism	6
Average % change labour turnover	5
Average % change # accidents logged	-37
Average % change average wage/employee	5
Estimated average cost-savings due to SCORE (in USD)	22.769,00