Workers' health and enterprises profits: Evidence from an occupational safety and health program in manufacturing enterprises

Last registered on March 01, 2015

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Workers' health and enterprises profits: Evidence from an occupational safety and health program in manufacturing enterprises
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0000644
Initial registration date
March 01, 2015

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
March 01, 2015, 7:11 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
University of Mannheim

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2014-08-15
End date
2016-08-31
Secondary IDs
Abstract
This evaluation assesses the impact of the ILO's occupational Safety and Health Program on small and medium-sized enterprises in the Indonesian manufacturing sector. While working in the manufacturing sector is hazardous per se due to the use of heavy machinery, tools, chemicals and the like, workers are even more at risk in an environment where basic labor standards are not enforced. Resulting work place accidents leading to the temporal or permanent inability to work, or even death, have severe economic consequences. Workers face unexpected health expenditures and the sudden loss of income. For enterprises, the sudden loss of workers interrupts productive activities and may affect profitability if enterprises cannot compensate the shortfall in labor in the production process.

The Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) program of the ILO aims to improve occupational safety and health of SME workers in East Java. More specifically, the innovation implements kick-off trainings and several after-trainings to foster behavioral change with respect to workplace conditions among SMEs. After-trainings attempt to reinforce the occupational safety and health training through monitoring visits. The target population comprises manufacturing SMEs client to a local microfinance institution. Ultimately, OSH is believed to improve workers' health and increase productivity of SMEs.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Kemper, Niels. 2015. "Workers' health and enterprises profits: Evidence from an occupational safety and health program in manufacturing enterprises." AEA RCT Registry. March 01. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.644-1.0
Former Citation
Kemper, Niels. 2015. "Workers' health and enterprises profits: Evidence from an occupational safety and health program in manufacturing enterprises." AEA RCT Registry. March 01. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/644/history/3687
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) program of the ILO aims to improve occupational safety and health of SME workers in East Java. More specifically, the innovation implements kick-off trainings and several after-trainings to foster behavioral change with respect to workplace conditions among SMEs. After-trainings attempt to reinforce the occupational safety and health training through monitoring visits.

SMEs receive information on the program and are invited to participate by the branch staff of the local microfinance organization. The OSH is offered to the total population of all manufacturing clients of eight branches of a local microfinance organization, but participation is voluntary.
Intervention Start Date
2015-03-02
Intervention End Date
2016-08-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Business sales per month, Missed work days due to accidents, Investment in workplace safety
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Business sales per month: Business sales per month in IDR

Missed work days due to accidents: Number of work days missed due to accidents

Investment in workplace safety: Investment classified as an improvement in workplace safety (binary, amount)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The target population comprises 484 SMEs in eight target branches of a microfinance institution, all of whom predominantly serve manufacturing SMEs. The data collection covers all SMEs in target braches identified as to operate in the manufacturing sector. The panel data therefore represents a census rather than a sample of clients of manufacturing SMEs within the operations of the target branches.

SMEs in the target branches are randomly assigned to the OSH training. Randomization ensures that clients assigned to OSH and clients not assigned to OSH are, in expectation, very similar in terms of observed and unobserved characteristics. Any impact measured in the outcomes of the client group assigned to the OSH as compared to the clients not assigned to the OSH later into the program can thus be causally attributed to the intervention.

I use pair-wise matching to assign individual clients into two groups: one group receiving OSH, and another group not receiving OSH. Pairs of two are formed minimizing the Mahalanobis distance between the values of selected baseline controls balanced within pairs. In each pair one unit is randomly assigned to OSH and the other is not.

The following variables are used to achieve balance between treated and untreated SMEs: business sales per month, missed work days due to accidents, Investment in workplace safety, volume of last loan obtained from local microfinance organization, total value of business assets, total number of workers, and educational attainment of the entrepreneur.

In addition, balancing considers the manufacturing classification of manufacturing SMEs according to the Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (Rev.4) of the United Nations Statistical: food producer, chemical producer, metal producer, non-metal producer, textile producer, wood producer, other producer.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization was done with a computer using Stata.
Randomization Unit
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
484 SMEs
Sample size: planned number of observations
484 SMEs
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
OSH: 242 SMEs

CONTROL: 242 SMEs
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
MDE (OSH versus CONTROL), Outcome Variable: Business profits (Soure: Indonesia Family Life Survey 2007), Minimum detectable effect size: 0.2925 M Rupiah, MDE/Std.dev. in percent: 22,55 percent, MDE/mean in percent: 25,52 percent
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials