With the ever-increasing number of health and safety lawsuits in the UK it is becoming more and more vital to provide clear and understandable health and safety protocol, documentation, and instructions for employees.
In terms of work safety, regardless of the industry, it involves identifying the hazards and also controlling them according to the rules of the government and ongoing safety training and education for the employees.
Although essential, it can be challenging to develop and implement effective communication processes to tell employees who do not speak English, what they need to know and what actions they need to take about health and safety within the organisations.
With multi-lingual workforce clients depend upon ‘people within the workforce’ to relay the communication of business-critical information. The accuracy of the language, empathy and understanding of cultural differences of a multi-national workforce are critical to the effective communication of this business-critical information.
Using non-professional linguists, ‘people within the workforce’, has the hidden costs of inefficiencies whilst placing the business, brand, and potential employee’s health and safety, at risk. We suggest these three steps:
Translate job risk assessments, induction training and working procedures
Effective communication is a vital element in the development of a positive safety culture. As Managing for health and safety (HSG65) notes, “to achieve success in health and safety management, there needs to be effective communication up, down and across the organization”. However, communication is an often-neglected element of the management process, despite legal obligations and good practice to communicate.
Decisions on communication, including the “what, who and how”, should be part of an overall health and safety strategy, ensuring that the communication processes are delivering the required information to their audience in an effective manner that achieves the desired effect. We recommend providing employees with the information they can read in the language they understand to ensure legal compliance and good practice requirements are met.
Offer your staff across-cultural webinar online
The Government Communication Service defines communication as “building relationships with others, listening and understanding them, and conveying thoughts and messages clearly and congruently; expressing things coherently and simply, in ways that others can understand, and showing genuine knowledge, interest and concern; bringing these aspects together to make change happen”.
The fundamental goal of health and safety communication is to provide meaningful, relevant, and accurate information, in clear and understandable terms, to specific stakeholders.
Our online cross-cultural webinar will help you promote awareness and understanding of the management of health and safety as well as specific risk issues including cultural differences and different attitudes and perceptions towards health and safety compliance in different countries.
Create a video and let us translate the video subtitles
Your multilingual video will help you to ensure the health, safety, and welfare compliance of the company by describing the policies and procedures in native languages spoken by your employees. Such a video can cover machinery guarding, fire, safety, and sanitation.
Practicing proper procedures in a safe environment will allow the employees to work without worrying about their safety.
PAB can provide transcription, translation, and subtitling service. Whatever the size and complexity of the demands of your linguistic service, we can offer you fast, reliable and top-quality solutions.
PAB Languages Centre Ltd – will help to get your messages right whether you have operations across the globe or need clear and coherent communication with your diverse workforce based in the UK.
For more information about our certified translation services, get in touch with our team on 07799772360 or visit our website
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