Consultant(s)

Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry The Office for Business Sustainable Development (SDforB)

Terms of Reference

“Providing service to design and deliver training session for enterprises on workplace issues”

For the Project

“Promotion of Children’s Rights and Business Principles among Enterprises in Vietnam (CRBP Project) and Work No Child’s Business Project (WNCB Project)”

Vietnam is a lower mid-income country that has made rapid economic progress, resulting in poverty reduction and human development. Poverty rates declined from 58 percent in 1993 to 10 percent in 2014 and the country achieved three of the Millennium Development Goals with notable progress made towards five others. With the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it will take commitment and efforts by all stakeholders, including the business sector to provide a fair chance in life for every child. Sustainable development is development that can be carried on sustained by future generations. Therefore, children are at the core of sustainable development and the actions towards SDGs. The National Action Plan on the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, approved by the Prime Minister on 10th May 2017 outlines that efforts will be made to leave no one behind and to first access those groups of population who are the most difficult to access, including children.

Business impacts the lives of Children in many ways, including some that the business may not even recognize. Due to the unique rapid physical, mental and emotional development of children, any existing or potential negative impact resulting from a business activity can have an irreversible impact on them. Children are stakeholders of business – as family members of employees, young workers, consumers, members of the community and environment in which the business operates. Moreover, children are the future employees and business leaders.

The Project on Promotion of Children’s Rights and Business Principles (CRBP) among Enterprises in Vietnam is developed by SDforB/VCCI and funded by UNICEF to strengthen the knowledge, capacity and commitment of businesses with high impact on children (with a focus on the Footwear and Apparel, Information, Communication and Technology, Travel and Tourism Industries) to respect and support children’s rights as outlined in the Children’s Rights and Business Principles. The project will future strengthen multi-stakeholder engagement with relevant government ministries, elected bodies, academic and training institutions to create an enabling environment for businesses to respect and support children’s rights in Vietnam.

The project will closely follow the content of the Children’s Rights and Business Principles (CRBP) released by UN Global Compact, UNICEF and Save the Children. These Principles will serve as an overall guidance framework for businesses by promoting respect and support for children’s rights in the workplace, marketplace, community and environment. The principles provide a child rights lens to the global standards on business and human rights established by the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights for Implementing the United Nation’s Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework.

This project aims to integrate children’s rights issues into the VCCI/SDforB initiatives to promote responsible and sustainable business practices and business sector’s contribution towards achieving the SDGs in Vietnam. VCCI has been assigned as the lead agency for objective 12.6 and 16.5 of the National Action Plan for the Implementation of 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda which aims at encouraging the business community to apply sustainable practices, implement social accountabilities with regards to poor people and vulnerable groups and integrate information into periodical report. The National Action Plan (NAP) outlines that efforts will be made to leave no one behind and to first access those groups of population who are most difficult to access, including children. Therefore, this project will also contribute toward VCCI’s responsibility towards the NAP on SDGs.

2. The purpose of the assignment

Recently, despite the support from Government side, businesses have faced a lot of challenges in growing in size and revenue which come from the harsh and competitive business environment, global trade tension with new generation trade agreements like EVFTA, CPTPP, Industry Revolution 4.0 and the sharing economy. All of these can present tremendous opportunities but also pose huge challenges for businesses and requires them to focus more on intensive investment, building reasonable plans for strategically allocating human resource, applying new technology, and optimizing management ability and also placing further focus on product and service quality. One of the most consider challenges of the business development is to secure their labor, especially the young labor group. Our research on Children’s Rights and Business at workplace in 2019 was found that business has efforts to comply with Child Labor Protection but limited opportunities and supports for Youth Employments and they are not prioritized of businesses. Perhaps this come from the fact that businesses do not have a proper and sufficient awareness on the benefits of investing in human resource in a sustainable way by considering people as the center for the business development itself. From 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic have much more sharp impact on the youth labor and has brought in its wake the emergence of new forms and patterns of vulnerability of child labor (in supply chain, family production and business process, micro and small enterprises, etc.).

According to Child Labor Survey in 2018, 1,031,944 children were classified as “children in child labor” accounting for 5.4% of the 5-17-year-old population. Nearly 50.4% of them (519,80 children) worked in heavy, dangerous and hazardous work. Although this rate in Vietnam is at low average compared to the regional and global rate, we still need to make higher intervention through join hand among different stakeholder government agencies, family, NGOs, society and especially businesses to make sure Children will be protected from all forms of child labor.

In terms of young worker protection, there are some criteria need to be considered in policies and practices of business such as stipulate decent working condition, specify zero tolerance of harassment and exploitation of young worker and measures in place to protect them from discrimination, violence and abuse at workplace, provide them opportunities to access education, training on professional and life skills.

Young labor accounts as Vietnam’s great assets. However, many of them still do not have education background and skills relevant to labor market a. Our project research on “Employability skills gaps and Good practices from Businesses to Upskills Marginalized and vulnerable young people” in 2020 found that there are some obstacles from supply labor side such as education and training gaps, insufficient skills and career orientation, lack of awareness of the necessary employability skill in the 4th Industrial Revolution. Also, the research determined that employers now value experience and skills rather than attainment and businesses struggle to find the suitable workers that match their skills needs. Therefore, equipping young workforce with the right skills will be an important part to accelerate economic growth and further its economic modernization in the coming decade and more. In order to approach development trend and increase their competitiveness, businesses need to have suitable methods to improve their workforce by providing opportunities for skilled workers especially adolescents and youth.

Under CRBP project and Work No Child’ Business (WNCB) project, we aim to conduct a series of activities with key businesses to strengthen their understanding, capacity and their commitment in respecting and supporting children’s rights. To achieve this objective, the project will carry out an assignment to design and deliver training sessions for enterprises on workplace issues focus on 1) Child labor prevention and remediation; 2) Young worker protection and 3) Skill development for young workers. With this assignment CRBP and WNCB project expected to not only promote the Children’s Right in business on related issues but also contribute to the effort of 2021 International Year for the Elimination of Child Labor and implementation of the 2nd “National Programme on Child Labour Prevention and Elimination 2021 – 2025 with a vision to 2030”.

3. Objective of the assignment

• To develop and design training manual (learning materials, templates, tools, references and resources) to build capacity for enterprises on 1) Child labor prevention and reduction; 2) Young worker protection and 3) Skill development for young workers. The training material need to match with 3 prioritized sectors of the project i.e. Apparel and Footwear, Tourism and Travel, Information, Communication and Technology and their supply chain.
• To deliver trainings for businesses (Apparel and Footwear, Tourism and Travel, Information, Communication and Technology and their supply chain) on three above topics which include 2 online webinar with enterprises representatives and 2 in person training workshop (one in Hanoi and one in Ho Chi Minh city in 2-3 days for 30 participants each trainings.

4. Contractor’s responsibilities

• Develop training outline and detail content of training manual to build capacity for enterprises on 1) Child labor prevention and remediation; 2) Young worker protection and 3) Skill development for young workers.
• Prepare all necessary documents, tools, references and resources for the trainings and identify clearly the use of those documents to each topic
• Conduct outreach to enterprises to prepare for the delivering of training, including Small and Medium Enterprises and key training organizations/departments.
• Prepare a training delivery schedule together with resource persons for the training.
• Conduct 2 online webinars for enterprises to introduce to the training plan, the need of training, benefit of capacity building, business cases, etc.
• Develop the Pre and Post evaluation of each training
• Deliver the 2-3 day trainings for enterprises on the three prioritized topics. Two trainings will be conducted one in Hanoi and one in Ho Chi Minh city.
• Prepare and submit the final report (Final training documents, manual and power point slides, group work exercise, output-based progress report of 2 webinars and trainings and final report of whole training together with results and recommendation)

All work needs to be consulted with VCCI and UNICEF before implementation.

5. Assignment Period

The assignment is expected to be from July 2021 to October 2021 (16 weeks). The consultant(s)/survey team are expected to do the following tentative tasks:

The estimate no. of days could be adjusted based on the discussion among Contractor, VCCI and UNICEF

6. Expected deliverables

• Detailed training outline, workplan and staffing plan
• Detail training manual with tools, reference, manual and power point presentations, pre-post evaluation form, etc. The presentation and training tools will be open source and can be used by other enterprises in the future.
• List of training enterprises, training organizations/departments and contact person
• The final report (Final training documents, manual and power point slides, group work exercise, output-based progress report of 2 webinars and trainings and final report of whole training together with results and recommendation)

7. Selection criteria

Qualifications for the Institution/Organization:

• An organization/institution with 8-10 years’ international experience in providing capacity building and training for enterprises;
• Have strong experience and knowledge on children’s rights in business, child labor prevention and remediation, young worker protection and employability skill development
• Capacity to develop practical training guidelines and programmes, experience in documentation, reporting and evaluation of training programs.
• Strong experience working with and understand businesses/enterprises in Vietnam and have good network.
• Consulting team members have at least master’s degree or equivalent in Social development, CSR, Management and minimum 8 years of experience in providing/conducting training and developing training material/guidelines
• Team members have experience in dealing with children’s rights at workplace focus on labor, child labor, young worker and skill development
• At least 3 master trainers should be enlisted in the pool of trainers in related topics
• All survey Team members/Consultants must respect the confidentiality of the data.

8. How to apply

Interested institutions/organizations are invited to submit their proposals to thaolm@vcci.com.vn before 30 June 2021, using the subject line “Application for Providing service to design and deliver training session for enterprises on workplace issues”. The proposal should include:

• Technical proposal:
  • Tender profile and relevant project’s datasheets
  • Understandings of the service
  • Detailed methodology and approach to the service
  • Curriculum Vitaes (CVs) of all survey team
  • Workplan and staffing plan
• Financial proposal: Detail budget break down including consultation fee, travel expenses and other expenses which used for the assignment.

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