Proposal: Allowing non-assignees to complete tasks on behalf of the assignee

Owned by Lite Farm
Last updated: May 03, 2022 by Calum Murray
2 min read

 

Problem:

Should farm management be allowed to complete tasks on behalf of the assignees of those tasks? If so, what responsibility does LiteFarm have to prevent worker exploitation?

 Background: https://lite-farm.atlassian.net/browse/LF-2230

Context:

Some farmers use LiteFarm to manage their worker expenses. Right now only the assignee of tasks can complete it. The number of hours associated with a completed task directly impacts their wages.

 

Proposal:

Allow farm management to complete tasks on behalf of assignees with some controls in place. Some potential approaches:

  1. Farm workers consent (or don’t) to this when accepting an invitation to a farm. When a user onboards we could ask their preference for ongoing communciations, e.g.: email, WhatsApp, SMS, etc.

    1. David didn’t believe consenting to the privacy policy was sufficient. There needed to be an additional check or notification to make sure farmers aware that management can do this thing.

      1. This paper found that requesting specific permissions with explanations was probably a better way of obtaining informed consent from users

      2. This report on obtaining meaningful consent from the privacy commissioner of canada gives many ideas on how to obtain meaningful consent. Two key points they made were to emphasize the key elements which people are consenting to, and to also allow people to view and consent in different levels of details (for example in point form as a more basic view, and then the full legal doc as a more advanced view)

  2. Save some additional flag for “Not completed by assignee” in the DB and have that display somehow in financials

  3. Emailing the assignee the details of the completed task so they have a permanent record for any type of labour complaint. This would happen once a week, and users have the option to discontinue receiving the email. Ideally also a SMS / WhatsApp communications to support accessibility, preferably WhatsApp (after some due diligence).

  4. Via the Notification center, FW receives a daily report, when applicable, listing the tasks completed by others for them. FW can then choose to have this emailed to them for record purposes.

  5. Allow FW to file a complaint

  6. Ability to appeal the accuracy of a task completed on their behalf back to farm management

  7.  

 

Noted we do not have any phone communication capabilities today.

 

Per Sarah-Louise: My thoughts are: (1) updating the privacy policy (I will work on clarity in language); (2) if we can’t reach free, prior, informed consent to have someone else complete the tasks on their behalf, we make that clear. It seems that this is unlikely to achieve with the use case constraints. And then the notification (WhatsApp + email) is flagged when someone else completes the task so that they can take action if needed.; (3) There is a regular report on hours so that the information is available if they want to advocate on their behalf (WhatsApp + email).

 

 

Other ideas / combinations of the above welcome!

Benefits:

 

 

Execution: