Posts Tagged ‘language’

Review: Work Safe: An Employer’s Guide to Safety and Health in a Diversified Workforce

Monday, November 18th, 2013

Review of work produced by Peter Rousmaniere, with support from Concentra and Broadspire.
Of the 15 occupations that are expected to see the largest numerical growth between now and 2020, foreign-born workers, immigrants, are currently over-represented in eight of them. And of those eight, six are classified as “low-skilled” for which a high school diploma is not required. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that these occupations will grow by 42% between 2010 and 2020. Odds are that they will continue to be over-represented by foreign-born workers.
Consider this:

  • Forty-nine percent of private household employees are immigrants;
    • Within the Construction industry, 65% of all “reinforcing iron and rebar” workers are immigrants, and they total 27% of all construction laborers;
  • Forty percent of maids and housekeepers in the Accommodation industry are immigrants; and,
  • While immigrants comprise 24% of all the workers in the Agricultural industry, they make up 61% of the field workers.

As of 2010, 29% of immigrants between the ages of 25 and 64 lacked a high school degree, as opposed to 7.4% of the U.S.-born population. And, although immigrants make up 15.8% of all U.S. workers (something a bit hard to believe when you consider their ridiculous over-representation in those fast growing industries), they account for 20% of all reported injuries.
These facts, alone, make Peter Rousmaniere’s Work Safe: An Employer’s Guide to Safety and Health in a Diversified Workforce (PDF), published with support from Concentra and Broadspire, a timely and compelling read. Moreover, it’s free and is available as a pdf download at Broadspire.
Rousmaniere, publisher of the Working Immigrants blog since January 2006, and, until November 2013, a columnist for Risk and Insurance Magazine, has, until now, been a “voice crying in the wilderness.” He’s been banging the drum and sounding the alarm, saying that we, as a nation, and particularly as employers, are unprepared–indeed, are refusing to prepare–to deal with the needs and cultural differences presented by immigrant workers. A Harvard MBA, Rousmaniere believes that, although there is a moral imperative for doing so, making the effort to become sensitive to the language and cultural differences in our immigrant workforce just makes good business sense. And in this 57-page, 6×9 inch, handsomely produced Employer’s Guide he skillfully makes the point.
Although immigrants are also over-represented in high-skilled jobs, this book is really aimed at the vast underbelly, immigrant workers who lack the education and skill set to navigate through the thorny thicket of work rules and health care issues, immigrants who may speak wonderful Spanish, or any number of other languages, but nary a word of English. The theme running through the entire book is one that urges us not to assume that English-challenged immigrant workers understand what we say, even when we say it in their language. Rousmaniere makes this point over and over again, so much so that I thought the book could have been somewhat shorter without losing a thing.
To me, this sentence is the big pitch:

“…moderately or low-skilled immigrants working in jobs of average or above-average injury risk are likely to face greater safety issues even if they work alongside U.S.-born workers.”

The book has an excellent chapter on safety training in which Rousmaniere doesn’t so much suggest what to say, but rather how to say it. He writes about teaching through stories, role-playing, body mapping and pictures. He’s big on pictures, recommending that employers go so far as to hire cartoonists, because cartoonists have “a knack for telling a story in one or many panels.” He even describes how cartoonists get paid and offers “Tips for working with artists.”
In the Workers’ Compensation chapter, Rousmaniere offers a novel idea — the prepaid indemnity card. He points out that about a third of the people who earn less than $30,000 a year don’t have bank accounts and, consequently pay hundreds of dollars a year in check cashing charges. To help them, he suggests that claims payers contract with debit card vendors to pay indemnity benefits directly to injured workers via the card, which the vendor would arrange to have honored at ATMs. Interestingly, this isn’t a new concept. Rousmaniere says, “An increasing number of employees receive their wages via a payroll debit card.” Left unsaid is what that “increasing number” actually is, but if you think about it, his idea might have more than a little merit because of the inexorable gravitational movement of technology.
The book has an extensive chapter on “Medical Care Across Cultures,” and here Rousmaniere is writing about all medical care, not just work injury care. Again, it’s all about translation and culture. He gives an illustration: “In some societies, it’s believed that coughs are always fatal.” I found myself wishing he’d enlighten us as to which ones.
He writes about “Job-Specific Challenges in Cross-Cultural Care” and says that “Medical Case Managers are likely to have to confront a patient’s steep learning curve when it comes to understanding the American health care system.” I found that one a bit rich, as in – does any patient understand the American health care system, if you can call it that.
In fact, I found that much of the chapter on health care really applied, not only to immigrants, but also to many native-born Americans who are unskilled at navigating the health care maze and have what Rousmaniere calls “low health literacy.” For example, he offers a bullet list of “side effects” for this affliction: failure to seek preventive care, leading to more ER visits and hospital admissions; no written agenda for medical visits; missed appointments; lack of follow-through with imaging tests; misuse of medications; and so on.
Rousmaniere suggests an “Rx for Hospitals: Professional Interpreters.” Moreover, he points out, “The Civil Rights Act obligates medical providers to arrange for patient communication in the most suitable language for the patient.” I did not know that. He offers health care providers another bullet list of tips for overcoming language differences. In today’s health care world the first tip, “Slow down. Plan double the normal time,” might be hard to achieve. Trouble is, the tips all make good sense. They’re thoughtfully done, and, were it not for our health care assembly line process, they’d be the norm. My bottom line takeaway to Rousmaniere’s health care recommendations: they will take nearly dictatorial leadership to implement.
Then for good measure, in case we’ve missed the point, Rousmaniere throws in an entire chapter on translation and interpreting, entitled “Translate This!” But just when you know to the soles of your boots that this translation thing has gone way too far, he throws in this Case Study zinger that makes you think he might be right to concentrate so much on this:

“An English-speaking hospital staff once misinterpreted a patient’s complaint of “intoxicado” as an admission of being intoxicated, not that the patient felt nauseous. The mistake resulted in permanent paralysis and a multi-million dollar financial settlement.”

The translation and interpreting chapter lists a number of resources of which health care and insurance pros will likely be unaware. He compliments California for Senate Bill 853, which “requires that health insurance organizations provide free and timely translation and interpretation services for patients with limited English proficiency.” And Rousmaniere’s “10 Planning Steps for Translation and Interpreting” is spot on.
But for my money, the little jewel in this book is the last chapter – “Free Online Resources.” I loved it. He has hunted down a wonderful library of resources that every professional in the field should have at his or her fingertips. They come as General Resources, such as a number of truly excellent offerings from the State Compensation Fund of California, Spanish to English and English to Spanish dictionaries published by OSHA, and resources aimed at a number of industries, the ones with all those low-skilled, fairly uneducated immigrants. Excellent, indeed!
All this may be a bit much for middle and small market employers, who may not think they have the resources or time to invest in this level of acculturation. I suspect that this book may not be a big seller for them. Health care professionals, on the other hand, would be well-advised to study it closely.
But, here’s an idea: if insurance companies and insurance agencies were to distribute the book to their customers, that would go a long way toward educating employers and getting Peter Rousmaniere out of the “wilderness.” For, in the immortal words of that great American philosopher and discount retailer, Sy Syms, “An educated consumer is our best customer.”
The official launch of the Guide will take place at the National Workers’ Compensation Conference in Las Vegas, NV, November 20-22.

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Aging Workers, Limited English, Limited Skills

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012

When a laborer with limited English is disabled from physical work, is he obligated to increase his employability by learning English? This interesting question emerged in the case of Enrique Gutierrez, a 48 year old welder who worked at Merivic, a company specializing in grain-related processing. Gutierrez came to the United States at age 14, but in his 34 years in the country never learned to speak or write English. While at work, Gutierrez fell about 10 feet onto a steel table, injuring his shoulder and wrist. He underwent two surgeries, worked for a while as a one-armed welder, and then was let go. His post-injury functioning was significantly limited, including difficulty lifting and carrying, gripping and grasping, and reaching.
When the workers comp commission found him permanently and totally disabled, the employer appealed and the case reached the Iowa Court of Appeals, where the finding of compensability was upheld. Up until 2007, Iowa courts routinely lowered the indemnity paid to limited English speaking workers, on the theory that a language disability was something within the power of the worker to correct. A case entitled Lovic v. Construction put an end to that practice. The reasoning in this decision is worth quoting:

Unfortunately, this line of cases [involving reduced indemnity]
overlooked the fact that the employers who hired these workers should
have reasonably anticipated that an injury which limits an ability to return
to manual labor work would have far more devastating consequences
upon non-English speaking workers than English speaking workers.
Oftentimes, this agency has penalized non-English speaking workers
despite the knowledge that the employers actually recruited such workers
because they were willing to work for less wages.

In other words, you get what you pay for: limited English speaking workers are willing to work for less, so the employer benefits from this potential “disability.” The ruling goes on to attack the rationale for the reduced wages:

What has been troublesome to many, including myself, is that this
agency has never similarly treated non-immigrant workers for failing to
learn other skills. Defendants would certainly have trouble citing any
agency or court precedent in the workers’ compensation arena where an
industrial award for an English speaking worker was lowered because the
injured worker, before the injury, failed to anticipate he would suffer a
devastating work injury and failed to obtain a type of education before the
injury that would mitigate the effects of such an injury.
We simply cannot assume that claimant was capable of such training or that such classes are generally successful in leading to employment where fluent English is required . . . .

By reiterating the logic of the pre-Lovic court, Merivic was attacking settled – albeit recently settled – law. The Appeals Court rejected this “collateral attack” on Lovic and upheld the permanent total award, and in doing stumbled upon yet another conundrum: that of the older worker. The court found that once a laborer goes beyond age 47, his ability to perform physically demanding work comes into question. A vocational expert retained by Gutierrez described the 48 year old worker as “approaching advanced age.” The Judge noted that “We have previously held the age of forty-seven is a factor that the commissioner may consider in finding industrial disability.” The expert also noted that Gutierrez’s entire career involved “limited education” and a work history limited to physically demanding jobs, which his permanent work restrictions now prevented him from performing.
The Very Big Picture
Our Colleague Peter Rousmaniere provides a valuable perspective on aging manual workers. In his Risk & Insurance article “The Age Trap” he points out that 55+ workers comprised 16.7 percent of the workforce in 2010, a number projected to increase to 22.7 percent by 2020. In contrast to Enrique Gutierrez, most aging workers are not injured and eligible for workers comp; to be sure, their bodies are wearing down and they are confronted with diminishing strength and balance, even as they desperately try to hold onto their places in the workforce. Rousmaniere suggests that employers develop a renewed focus on prevention, one that has been adapted to the realities of the aging worker. After all, these workers are valued for the skill and experience they bring to the work, even as their work capacities diminish.
The Big picture here – and it is a very big picture indeed – is the dilemma of aging workers who perform physically demanding jobs and who have little education and virtually no transferable skills. There are millions of such workers, some are immigrants, while many others are native born. Most have zero prospects for a secure retirement, even as Congress contemplates pushing social security retirement even further into the future.
Whether they like their jobs or not, aging workers see themselves working out of necessity well into the their 60s, 70s and even 80s. As their bodies inevitably wear out, as their injuries (cumulative and sudden) lead a number of them into workers comp courts across the country, judges will be confronted with the same dilemma that faced the appeals court in Iowa: for older workers with no transferable skills, workers comp becomes the retirement plan of choice for those with no retirement plans and no way to continue working.

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Posted in Best Practices, Business, Medical Issues, State News | 1 Comment »

Making Safety a Universal Language

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

The following article is a guest post by Joey Lucia, a loss prevention supervisor at Austin-based Texas Mutual Insurance Co., the largest provider of workers’ compensation insurance in Texas.
Non-English-speaking Hispanic workers present unique safety challenges.
Picture this: It’s your first day on the job with a construction crew. Your boss asks you to help lay a foundation for an office building. High above, another worker is walking along a scaffold. He accidentally kicks a hammer off the scaffold, and you’re directly below it.
Fortunately, your company embraces a “total safety” culture. In a “total safety” culture, employees look out for one other. Everyone is accountable for not only their own safety but also their co-workers’ safety.
With that in mind, someone yells, “¡Cuidado, el martillo se puede cáer sobre ti!” Your co-worker warned you to get out of the way. If you didn’t understand Spanish, you might have been involved in a serious accident.
In 2006, Hispanic workers died at a rate that was 25 percent higher than all other workers in the United States, according to a study published last year in Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report. As of 2006, nearly 20 million workers in this country were Hispanic, making them one of the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. workforce.
Here are some tips for keeping non-English-speaking Hispanic workers safe. Follow the ones that fit your business, and you can help make your workplace safer and more productive.
Challenge: language
Language can be a barrier to communication, even among people who speak the same language. Imagine how hard it is for Hispanic workers who speak little or no English.
Solutions

  • Use more pictures and fewer words to point out hazards and teach safety procedures.
  • Most communication is nonverbal. Watch workers’ eyes, body language and expressions to see whether they understand instructions.
  • Train supervisors in basic, conversational Spanish. Send non-English-speaking Hispanic workers to a conversational English class. Focus on commonly used words in your industry.
  • Hire Spanish-speaking supervisors who have experience in your industry.
  • Ask bilingual employees to translate safety messages.
  • If you have training requirements, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration mandates that you provide them in a language that workers can understand. Hire a translation company to put safety training material into Spanish. Make sure the translator is fluent in the Spanish dialects spoken by your employees.

Challenge: literacy
Many Hispanic workers do not have the luxury of pursuing their education because they have to help support their families. About 40 percent of Hispanics age 25 and up do not have a high school diploma, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By comparison, about 14 percent of the total U.S. population does not have a high school diploma.
Solutions:

  • Keep training basic.
  • Provide simple, hands-on safety demonstrations.
  • Do not let employees start work until they show that they understand the training.
  • Provide follow-up training, and be sure to address new workplace hazards.

Challenge: fear
Have you ever been afraid of asking a question in front of a large group of people? Imagine asking it in a different language. Non-English-speaking Hispanic workers may put themselves at risk because they’re too embarrassed to ask questions about safety procedures. Some may even fear for their jobs if they report unsafe working conditions.
Solutions

  • Encourage every employee to report unsafe conditions.
  • Offer safety training away from the workplace. If the trainer is someone other than a manager, employees may be less intimidated and more likely to ask questions.
  • Make sure non-English-speaking Hispanic workers have peers they feel comfortable talking to.
  • Deliver the safety message to employees in their environment. For example, distribute Spanish-language safety training material at community functions.
  • Reward safe behavior in front of co-workers.
  • Take time to learn about your Hispanic workers and their culture.

Past blog posts that relate to this topic:
Safety for Spanish-speaking workers must address cultural as well as language barriers
Keeping the multicultural workforce safe
Qualified interpreters can save lives
Hispanic Fatalities on the job: the Tip of the Iceberg
When it comes to safety, make sure you speak the same language!
Mandatory English at the workplace?

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Posted in Guest Posts, Safety & Health | 2 Comments »

Free Web seminars: Standard/Universal Precautions and Communicating with Spanish Speaking Employees

Monday, May 14th, 2007

We’ve learned about a few free seminars that we thought we would pass along to you. We don’t have any connection with either of these groups, but they are both sponsored by reputable organizations and sound interesting.
Standard/Universal Precautions: Compliance, Beliefs, and Barriers – Wednesday, May 16
The North Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Center is sponsoring a free NORA Interdisciplinary webcast on Wednesday, May 16 from 1:00 – 2:30 pm EST. Kathy Kirkland, Executive Director, Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics in Washington, DC, will present “Standard/Universal Precautions: Compliance, Beliefs, and Barriers.” The seminar can be viewed live via webcast, or an archive link will be available a few days after May 16 for viewing at your convenience.
Access the seminar here at 1 pm EST on May 16, and log in as a guest. Type in your first and last name and click the “Enter” button to launch the OSHERC meeting space. You may need to download the meeting plug-in (Flashplayer). There will be an interactive question and answer session. Slides and an evaluation form are available.
The seminar topic has been approved for 1.5 contact hours or 0.15 CEUs through the University of North Carolina. To receive the CE credit, you must complete a registration form (hard copy available only) and send a $4.00 check payable to *Friday Center for Continuing Education* to Susan Randolph by *May 25, 2007*; you must also complete an evaluation form after the seminar.
More info: Susan A. Randolph, FAAOHN Clinical Instructor Occupational Health Nursing Program University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1700 Airport Road, CB #7502 Room #337 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7502 – Phone: 919-966-0979
Improving Communication with Spanish Speaking Employees – May 24
Benefits Management Online Forum & Expo is sponsoring this free online forum on Thursday May 24 at 2:00pm EST. Register for attendance here
The notice for this forum states:
If you are an employer with Spanish-speaking employees, an HR director responsible for the success of Spanish-speaking teammates, or a benefits specialist who must communicate plans to Spanish-speakers, this online forum is for you.
Spend an hour with Melissa Burkhart, founder and president of the consulting firm Futuro Solido USA, as she shows why developing Spanish straight talk es muy importante. Melissa will explain the different workplace behaviors and values held by English-speaking and Spanish-speaking workers and reveal the secrets to successful trouble-shooting and team-building with Spanish-speaking employees.
In this presentation, you will learn about:
* Culturally rooted beliefs
* Common pitfalls and employer frustrations
* Strategic solutions for optimizing communication and building more effective teams

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Cultural competence in healthcare and beyond

Monday, March 29th, 2004

Is your workers comp provider network culturally competent? If not, you may fostering needless disability. Georgetown University’s Center on an Aging Society has an excellent article on the issue of cultural competence in healthcare, and defines the concept as “the ability of providers and organizations to effectively deliver health care services that meet the social, cultural, and linguistic needs of patients.”

The article addresses the specialized medical needs that the changing demographics demand, both for reasons of language and other cultural and socio-economic factors. It makes the case that positive outcomes require that physicians and other providers develop cultural competence in service delivery. Barring this competence, minorities are more likely to be dissatisfied with care.

If the providers, organizations, and systems are not working together to provide culturally competent care, patients are at higher risk of having negative health consequences, receiving poor quality care, or being dissatisfied with their care. African Americans and other ethnic minorities report less partnership with physicians, less participation in medical decisions, and lower levels of satisfaction with care. The quality of patient-physician interactions is lower among non-White patients, particularly Latinos and Asian Americans. Lower quality patient-physician interactions are associated with lower overall satisfaction with health care.

In workers comp, poor quality care and dissatisfaction hinder recovery and may well prolong disability. Dissatisfaction often also turns into lawsuits that might have been prevented. The issue of cultural competence has relevance to workers compensation in terms of health-care services delivered by workers compensation provider networks, but also in other aspects of prevention and claims management as well. We’ve previously discussed some of the challenges posed by an increasingly multilingual workforce, as well as the fact that some immigrant workers are at high risk of injuries or death.

The article suggests the following strategies for improving the patient-provider interaction and institutionalizing changes in the health care system:
1. Provide interpreter services
2. Recruit and retain minority staff
3. Provide training to increase cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills
4. Coordinate with traditional healers
5. Use community health workers
6. Incorporate culture-specific attitudes and values into health promotion tools
7. Include family and community members in health care decision making
8. Locate clinics in geographic areas that are easily accessible for certain populations
9. Expand hours of operation
10. Provide linguistic competency that extends beyond the clinical encounter to the appointment desk, advice lines, medical billing, and other written materials

This list might be a useful adjunct to an employer’s current gating issues when screening medical providers for a workers comp program. It also provides a checklist of considerations for loss control, risk management, and claims staff as well.

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Jobs that lure Mexican workers to the U.S. are killing them

Sunday, March 14th, 2004

In documenting what is referred to as a “worsening epidemic that is now claiming a victim a day,” a study by the Associated Press (AP) is exploring the reasons why Mexican workers are about 80 percent more likely to die from a work injury than native-born workers, and more than twice as likely to die on the job as other immigrant workers.
Some of the investigations findings:

  • Mexicans now represent about 1 in 24 workers in the United States, but about 1 in 14 workplace deaths.
  • The death rates are greatest in several Southern and Western states, where a Mexican worker is four times more likely to die than the average U.S.-born worker. yet despite this, OSHA has only a single Spanish-speaking outreach worker in its eight state Southeastern region.
  • While Mexican worker deaths were concentrated in the agriculture industry overall, the construction industry was also deadly, and far more so to native Spanish-speaking workers, including Mexicans, than to native born workers.
  • Both AP and an OSHA spokesperson state that these accidental deaths are almost always preventable.

Why this troubling trend? According to the AP report:
“Public safety officials and workers themselves say the answer comes down to this: Mexicans are hired to work cheap, the fewer questions the better.
They may be thrown into jobs without training or safety equipment. Their objections may be silent if they speak no English or are here illegally. And their work culture and Third World safety expectations don’t discourage risk-taking.
Federal and state safety agencies have started to recognize the problem. But they have limited resources – only a few Spanish-speaking investigators work in regions with hundreds of thousands of recent arrivals – and often can’t reach the most vulnerable Mexican workers.
President Bush’s recent proposal to grant illegal immigrants temporary legal protections energized the national immigration debate. Yet in these discussions, job safety has been an afterthought. Meanwhile, Mexicans continue to die on the job.”

Indeed, it would seem that a guest worker program that lacks any provision for worker rights might actually exacerbate the problem. Immigrant workers are already reluctant to speak out about workplace safety violations or to report on the job injuries. This is due to several factors: many workers come from countries that do not have worker protections and do not know their rights here; language is often a barrier; some workers come from cultures where authority simply isn’t challenged, or where on the job risks are even greater than those they face here; and many immigrants are desperate to support families, so reluctant to come to the attention of authorities in any way. If employers are given the ability to revoke guest worker status, who will be protecting already disempowered workers from abuse of that privilege?

Are immigrants currently protected by workers compensation benefits, or does their alien status exclude them? According to the National Employment Law Project, most states do afford coverage:

“The majority of the states’ workers’ compensation laws include aliens in the definition of covered employees. Entitlement to lost wages under state workers’ compensation laws turns on state statutes and their definition of worker or employee. State courts in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas have specifically held that undocumented workers are covered under their state workers’ compensation laws.”
” … like Virginia, a number of other states also explicitly provide for workers’ compensation benefits for “lawfully or unlawfully employed” employees. They are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Utah.12 There is only one state, Wyoming, which has a statute specifically limiting coverage to documented aliens.”

What can we as an industry do about this troubling trend? Clearly, there are those employers who fall into a category of outright exploiters, and for those, nothing short of enforcement and meaningful penalties will suffice. OSHA is giving at-risk populations some attention in its 5-year plan, yet the agency’s enforcement efforts are stretched increasingly thin under the current administration. The insurance industry should play a leadership role in focusing attention on the issue, simply for reasons of good business sense if not for the moral imperative alone. And for responsible and well-intended employers, a solution begins first, with recognition and awareness of the problem, and second, with meaningful prevention and training measures.

Additional resources:
U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, Compliance Manual on National Origin Discrimination
National Employment Law Project – Immigrant Worker Project
National Immigrant Law Center
Workers Comp Insider – Mandatory English at the Workplace

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Mandatory English at the workplace?

Tuesday, February 10th, 2004

As U.S. demographics continue to shift, one of the tough issues facing employers is an increase in the multilingual work force. Some employers mandate English-only in the workplace, but should they? Discrimination suits based on such policies are on the increase, yet employers defend the practice on the basis of business necessity, productivity, safety, and the like. The EEOC keeps a sharp eye out for potential violations of the Civil Rights Act, and fines can be steep. Employers certainly need to be aware of EEOC Speak English-only Rules.

Culling from several sources including his own personal experiences, George’s Employment Blawg has a thoughtful exploration of this complex topic that’s well worth a read – we won’t try to duplicate his excellent research here. Don’t miss his sensible recommendation and sample policy at the end of the post.

This issue of workers who have a limited command of English or for whom English isn’t the first or native language is of great interest to us in terms of safety and prevention. Non-English speaking workers are frequently at greater risk in the workplace than their English speaking colleagues. For example:

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 815 Hispanics were killed on the job in 2000, an 11.6 percent increase over the previous year. This double-digit increase stands in sharp contrast to the two percent decrease in workplace fatalities for all workers.
The death toll for Hispanic workers is even starker in the construction industry, which leads all industries in fatal accidents. In 2000, construction fatalities overall dropped three percent — the industry’s first decline since 1996. The number of Hispanics killed at construction sites, however, jumped 24 percent.”

What are some best practices in this area? We certainly don’t pretend to know them all, but we’ve seen a few over the years: native speakers hired as translators to help train and orient new workers; telephonic translation services; worker buddy or mentor programs; on-site English-as-second-language classes that focus on workplace issues.

Here are a few articles resources on the topic, and hopefully as we explore this issue further over time, we can bring you more.
OSHA: Listos para ayudarle – Ready to Help You
The Language of Safety

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