In Conversation with Quintin Lake

Just Good Work is a mobile app, giving jobseekers information and advice about what to expect when they travel overseas for work.

We recently spoke to Quintin Lake to find out more about the app and how his Christian faith inspires him.

Before you created Just Good Work, you started the organisation FiftyEight. What is FiftyEight all about?

In 2011, during a trip around Asia, my wife and I came across some companies that were providing good work for people at risk of sexual exploitation. We were struck by the positive impact a good business model can bring to people and communities. We first learned about modern slavery from an article we had read, in National Geographic in 2004, and we felt led to think further about the issue and how vulnerable workers could be protected from exploitation.

Partway through our trip, we got lost in a desert in the Gulf, and we found ourselves on the outskirts of a labour camp. We were disturbed to see that many people were living in these camps for years at a time and being transported to construction sites to work each day with not much opportunity to be in society outside of that. It didn’t seem like much of a life. These two encounters set us on a journey to explore what companies were doing in practice and how recruitment throughout the supply chain could be done differently.

On our return to the UK, we began our research, gaining the knowledge and experience necessary to work with companies internationally. In 2014, we launched FiftyEight - the name FiftyEight is inspired by Isaiah 58 where the prophet Isaiah challenges God’s people to ensure workplaces and communities are free from exploitation and injustice.

At FiftyEight, our vision is simple. We want to see good work for people everywhere. We partner with business, academia, government and civil society to address exploitation in the supply chain, raising the bar for working conditions globally. We do this through our research projects and technological solutions such as the Just Good Work app.

How did your research lead to the creation of the Just Good Work app?

We spent a lot of time talking to large and small companies across the world about what ‘good’ looked like. We explored what they knew about the recruitment journey and the experience of individuals. Every company we spoke to had migrant workers in the supply chain and said these workers were the most likely to experience exploitation - yet it was the area of their supply chains they had the least visibility of and the least influence to change. We got to know workers in the Gulf and time and again, they told us about paying extortionate fees to get to the Gulf, being paid less on arrival than they had been promised, getting into greater debt, living in worse accommodation than they had ever imagined, labouring in extreme heat and being dealt with by numerous middle men who would each demand a fee.

We met one particular Kenyan worker in Qatar in 2018 and he wished he could have known more of the reality of what to expect from the recruitment and employment experience in a new country. As he reflected on his experience, he came up with the idea of a mobile app, summing it up like this: "I wouldn’t tell people not to come, I would want them to be able to make the decision I didn’t get to make. I thought I was choosing something, and I ended up with something else."

His idea sparked a journey for our team. We set to work building a platform for workers, good employers and labour providers, launching the pilot version for Kenyans moving to Qatar in 2019.

What information is available on the Just Good Work app?

The app is available in 14 languages in the UK and provides country and sector-specific information on jobs, visas, medical provision and employment rights. It also contains real stories from people on the same journey and enables workers to store documents safely, keeping their paperwork in one place that they can access at any time.

It explains what questions to ask recruiters before applying for jobs, costs to avoid, documentation to prepare, problems to watch out for, and advice on acceptable living and working conditions, what to expect on arrival, changing jobs, local culture, how to give feedback to make jobs better for future workers and how to get help in any country.

What has been the impact of the app?

When the pilot app was launched it had an immediate impact on the friends and family of workers in the Gulf. Some workers forwarded it to their friends in Kenya and said it helped warn their friends and validated their story, which hadn’t been believed before. The app grew by word of mouth along with targeted outreach and has now been downloaded more than 150,000 times.

In addition, some recruitment agents in Kenya downloaded the app and admitted they had not known the law on fees. Similarly, some companies said they hadn’t known enough about the rights and requirements of workers. We were encouraged when the helpline in Kenya started receiving phone calls from people who were about to move overseas, seeking advice and reassurance.

How has the app evolved?

Over the years, new routes have been developed in the app and it is now available in more than 47 countries. Sometimes we have secured grant funding for a specific country or context, such as the UK Association of Labour Providers who first supported adapting the app in the UK. At other times, the app has been supported by a sector such as UK agricultural work where retailers, growers and visa sponsors have collectively got behind making it available to their supply chain.

We now have the functionality to show videos of what a factory or accommodation looks like, so workers can see their potential job before agreeing to it. This has been a helpful tool for recruiters because they are able to tell workers to get in touch if the work is different to how it is portrayed on the app. This has increased accountability and enabled whistleblowers to have the confidence to speak up or start grievance processes.

What are your long-term dreams for the app and its impact?

We want to see people connected with known, good employers and for more workers to see the workplace they are going to in advance, enabling them to make informed decisions. We want the app to get into as many hands as possible. In fact, we want everyone who is going overseas for work to know about the app. Long-term, we want to see good recruitment and employment practices being embedded at scale and worker exploitation becoming the exception. Ultimately, we want to see a worldwide transformation in the way people are recruited.

How can the Clewer network help?

We would love Clewer supporters to tell any migrant workers they know about the app. Also, if people run their own business or work in sectors with a high risk of modern slavery, please consider sharing the app with the leadership of your company so they can use it in procurement and HR.