Technology for Screening and Training Supervisors in Soft Skills

Good managers are important for both worker satisfaction as well as for enabling workers to achieve higher productivity, and as a result, earn higher wages. However, identifying good managers, both among candidates at the time of hiring and among incumbents for the purposes of rewarding best practices and targeting training in deficient skills, is costly and difficult, particularly for low-margin labor-intensive manufacturing firms in developing countries. Our proposed study seeks to evaluate, via a randomized evaluation, the impact of access to a low-cost managerial screening and soft-skills training tool in the workplace that aims to improve both worker satisfaction a well as firm productivity by building a managerial cadre that is better trained in soft skills and managerial best practices. Our study aims to contribute to the growing literature on the important role that soft-skills training plays in improving both employment and business outcomes in the developing world.