The Language of Safety: Part 2

Rixio Medina is president of the Board of Certified Safety Professionals and serves on OSHA’s National Advisory Committee on Safety and Health. He is concerned that following a period of decline, the number of fatalities among non-English-speaking employees is on the rise again. According to Medina, nearly 20 percent of employees killed on the job in 2011 were foreign-born.

Medina believes that workplaces with non-English-speaking employees should establish a program that spells out their approach to bridging language gaps. The program should include training, supervision, and other steps such as these:

• Get foreign-born employees involved as bilingual translators, safety committee members, and experts in hazard identification.
• Have a bilingual employee accompany work groups of non-English-speaking employees so that they do not miss important safety communications.
• Ask affected employees how you can best meet their communication needs.
• Take steps to make sure non-English-speaking workers are not excluded from job safety analysis, toolbox talks, etc.
• Encourage supervisors and other workers to practice tolerance and acceptance and to be good listeners.
• Make sure safety policies and practices are extended to non-English-speaking employees of independent contractors working at your site.

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• Engage employees through family and faith connections. Communicate safety messages at social and community events where foreign-born workers feel comfortable.
• Seek out resources from industry groups, the Board of Certified Safety Professionals, ASSE, and other workplace safety and health organizations. 

Why So Many Injuries?

Why are injury and fatality rates for foreign workers so high? Jill Bishop of Multilingual Connections, a Chicago language training and translation firm, offers the following possible explanations:

• Immigrants, especially Latinos, work in high-risk jobs such as construction at a higher rate than the general population.
• Approximately 65 percent of low-wage immigrant workers have limited English proficiency.
• Safety is viewed though a different lens. In their home countries, there may be fewer government inspections and, if a violation occurs, a bribe may solve the problem.
• For undocumented workers, a fear of deportation can be a motivation to quietly self-treat injuries that should be reported and treated by a medical professional.
• Some foreign-born workers believe that safety regulations exist to protect American-born workers who are less “tough.”

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Protect All Employees with Safety Training

To help train Spanish-speaking employees, BLR provides you with a Spanish-language edition of 7-Minute Safety Trainer, which contains handouts and quizzes to make sure your safety message is getting across in a language Hispanic workers are sure to understand. For more information and to order this invaluable resource, click here.

Of course, to help train English-speaking employees in a broad range of safety and health topics, there’s the regular edition of the BLR® 7-Minute Safety Trainer. Savvy safety professionals have for years relied on this unique training resource to keep their employees safe and healthy.

7-Minute Safety Trainerallows you to provide concise, memorable training easily and effectively in just a few minutes. Materials are ready-to-use, and each session supplies a detailed trainer’s outline as well as a handout, quiz, and quiz answers to get your points across quickly—and cost-effectively.

All told, this “trainer’s bible” contains 50 prewritten meetings covering almost every aspect of safety you’d want or need to train on, in a format designed to be taught in as little as 7 minutes. Major topics include:

—Confined spaces
—Electrical safety
—Fire safety and emergency response
—HazCom
—Machine guarding and lockout/tagout
—Material handling
—PPE use and care
—Housekeeping/slips, trips, and falls
—and dozens more

Just make as many copies as you need of the included handouts and quizzes, and you’re ready to train.

Equally important is that the program ships new meetings every quarter to respond to new and changed regulations. This service is included in the program price, which averages just over $1 a working day. In fact, this is one of BLR’s most popular safety programs.

If you’d like to personally evaluate 7-Minute Safety Trainer and see how it can build safety awareness, we’ll be happy to send it to you for 30 days on a no-cost, no-obligation trial basis. Just let us know, and we’ll arrange it.