Project Description

This research aims to examine the causes of high staff turnover and absenteeism in the Ethiopian textile industry. The phenomena, that goes along with low productivity, jeopardise the rentability, and by extension the success and existence of the newly raised industrial parks. The relatively young Ethiopian textile and garment industry is supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) with the special initiative on Training and Job Creation that has been designed to foster growth in enterprises to help create jobs.

 “The Ethiopian government has adopted an Industrial Development Policy to transform the currently agricultural-led economy into an industry-based one, aiming to lift the population out of poverty and becoming a middle-income country by 2025. The textile and garment industry are considered priority sectors on the path to industrialisation. These sectors are, however, often characterised by precarious working conditions, low wages, non-compliance with human rights and social and ecological standards. 

Due to different factors such as unsatisfying working conditions, lack of training and career development options, working hours, distance to workplace, salary expectation, etc., many textile factories in Ethiopia encounter problems with high staff turnover. However, high turnover rates cannot exhaustively be explained through economic factors. Various, particularly, social and cultural, reasons play a crucial role, too. Some of them being the agrarian socialisation of the labourers, their strong ties to the rural communities, as well as their cultural (and religious) values. The cultural distance between the labourers and the expectations and norms of an industrialised working environment is intensified by the distance between them and the mostly foreign managers who come from entirely different social and cultural backgrounds. Managers frequently attribute high absenteeism and high break-off rates to the labourers’ »mindset«. Measures for stabilising the workforce have thus far mostly been limited to improving the working conditions in the factories and creating economic incentives, e.g. through performance-related extra pay.

Moreover, the recruitment process is often not yet well-established and sometimes unethical procedures like poaching are part of it. Factories could minimise the turnover rates by improving their human resource strategies how to wisely chose the operators and how to increase job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Having smaller turnover rates will lead to a workforce that is more experienced in the companies’ tasks and procedures, which will automatically lead to higher efficiency and productivity.

In addition, the developments of COVID-19 brings many new challenges to factories. There is a high risk of infections as many people work closely together, workers might be scared to come to work and if many people are infected, production cannot continue as usual. Factories must adapt to this situation and especially the HR department can develop new strategies and concepts how to reduce risks and create a safe working environment for workers.

The research project sets a special interest in the perspectives, experiences, interests, and motivations of the labourers. It follows an interdisciplinary research design: In addition to cultural, industrial- as well as development-sociological questions, it also considers questions from the perspectives of economics as well as industrial and organisational psychology. It ultimately aims to provide recommendations to reduce albour turnover in the Ethiopian textile industry.

Key questions of the study: How do labourers cope with the accelerated industrialisation process? What challenges do they face in the transition from a primarily agrarian to an industrialised living environment? Which life skills and which work ethic do they need in order to work in the textile industry? Or, in other words, which life skills that they acquired to adapt to agrarian living are now a hindrance in their industrial surroundings?