Lay of the Land

The client was looking for a strategic partner who would relook at the entire ‘content moderation’ space with a completely new lens and move away from the quintessential labor and cost arbitrage model. The content world is growing multi-fold and would need much more moderation and oversight than ever before. This would mean that the partner would need to invest heavily in its’ people.

The Challenge

The content moderation services industry had just hit rock bottom. Another social media conglomerate, which had multiple global partners/vendors had suffered a massive setback, when it was uncovered that the employees of one of its partners/vendors had suffered immense mental trauma due to the exposure of the egregious content they had to moderate.

The million-dollar question was: How could we make sure that content is moderated accurately and timely, while at the same time making sure that the moderators remain healthy and well.

The Solution

Dipankar and team ideated with the client for over 6 months and looked at various aspects and delivery models but always kept the mental wellbeing of the employees at the forefront of everything else. Dipankar even coined the term ‘Guardians’ as the content moderators are the first line of defense, when it comes to our children being exposed to content, they should not be privy to. These moderators ‘guard’ our planet.

Finally, a small pilot was kicked on in Estonia, where the teams had psychologists and psychiatrists onsite to help the guardians, whenever they needed help. Shorter working days and employee wellness programs were built into the guardians’ work week.

A ‘wellness index’ was researched, tested, and instituted to measure the wellness of the guardians on a regular basis.

Value delivered to the client

• This pilot team grew to over 150 guardians in Estonia with not a single mental health case being reported

• Attrition was in the low single digits – unheard of in the industry previously

• Given the success of the team in Estonia, another team was setup in Ghana

• All the content moderation KPIs were dark green