Up to 5,000 South African workers on wine, fruit and vegetable farms stand to benefit from a groundbreaking new training package targeting discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace, thanks to a major new Comic Relief grant awarded to the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI).

ETI members including M&S, Tesco and fresh produce supplier Flamingo Holdings helped develop the training, signalling a further move from companies away from a sole focus on worksite auditing towards bottom-up, practical solutions for their suppliers.

The training digs deep into the highly sensitive issues of discrimination and sexual harassment of workers, which in turn can themselves trigger a whole range of other breaches of workers' rights, such as unfair dismissal, excessive overtime and low wages.

The scheme focuses on changing the attitudes and behaviour of workplace supervisors. These are the people who manage workers on a daily basis, and yet who often lack the skills to do so - in fact most don't even see themselves as managers.

Early pilots of the training in the UK and Kenya reveal that it is already having an impact, with supervisors reporting a new understanding of the need to control their emotions and treat people with respect.

Beverly Dixon, Group HR and H&S Director at Cambridgeshire-based fresh produce supplier G's Marketing Ltd, which piloted the training in the UK, said: “G’s worked together with ETI to adjust the training programme for a UK workforce and ran the training for two suppliers and 30 delegates on our sites in December 2009.

“Since then, communications have improved between those first line managers and employees. They’re now more alert to potential pitfalls and confident in dealing with any issues as they arise.”

Demand for the training is high with more than 130 supervisors have already been trained in ETI members' supplier sites, impacting on more than 3,000 workers.

Brenda Beryl Achieng, corporate affairs and compliance manager of Flamingo in Kenya, said: “We have enjoyed working with ETI in developing a practical solution to raise awareness and address the risks and wrongs the industry faces through education, communication and training.

“Building on the substantial progress we have already made in supervisor training, we are now delighted to be training 40 trainers in Kenya to deliver the ETI course for the 2,000 supervisors we employ there.“

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