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Rayan  
#1 Posted : 02 May 2025 17:14:48(UTC)
Rank: New forum user
Rayan

Hello fellow professionals, I’m currently working on improving emergency preparedness at a construction site with a multinational workforce. One challenge is ensuring that all workers, regardless of their language or background, clearly understand emergency procedures. I’d like to hear your thoughts on: Best practices for multilingual safety briefings and drills How you assess worker understanding in such environments Any tools, visual aids, or training techniques that have worked well Your input will be extremely valuable in enhancing safety culture and inclusivity on our sites. Many thanks in advance! Regards, Mohammed Khaleel Ahmed HSE Manager
peter gotch  
#2 Posted : 03 May 2025 09:33:59(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
peter gotch

Hi Mohammed

Whilst recognising that you may have been asked to look at emergency preparedness, I think that perhaps you should consider how to communicate with the multinational workforce on a broader level - perhaps not even restricted to Health and Safety etc.

Arguably the H&S is actually easier than other aspects of how the project is managed as there are international norms for pictorial information on e.g. emergency escape signage.

So if the site manager wants 4 carpenters in Zone A and 3 welders in Zone B and so on, how do they go about communicating this and telling the carpenters what is to be done?

firesafety101  
#3 Posted : 05 May 2025 11:17:42(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
firesafety101

I have some experience here on shopfitting sites with foreign labourers.  Luckily there was always one who understood and spoke English so I directed my instructions at him and he then passed on the information to the others.

Don't know how I would have managed if none of them understood English.

Jonny95  
#4 Posted : 05 May 2025 14:01:30(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
Jonny95

Firesafety I've had this battle in our factory with our operational management team on this subject. Someone once even had the cheek to call me racist for bringing up my worries and concerns, that not only do we struggle to complete any basic training, but how are they expected to do the job properly regardless of health and safety?

I watched a site manager ask a supervisor to get an English-speaking foreign national to translate a simple task. Talk about Chinese whispers? how do you know the information you've just passed on is going to be relayed back to the other staff accurately, without it being simplified, or even being passed on at all?

Edited by user 05 May 2025 14:03:01(UTC)  | Reason: Spelling

Alan Haynes  
#5 Posted : 05 May 2025 18:15:29(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Alan Haynes

As someone who is retired for several years, can I ask a simple question. Is it OK these days to insist, when taking on new staff, to require that applicants have a basic understanding of English? We used to in the 'good old days'. Also made it a contractual requirement with Contractors and their subbies. I remember getting a subby removed as he spoke no English. Harsh, but how do you manage things, (not just safety), properly otherwise?

Edited by user 05 May 2025 18:16:37(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

grim72  
#6 Posted : 06 May 2025 07:16:18(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
grim72

Out of interest has anyone tried using translation apps - there seem to be a few that state they translate in real-time - so in theory they could all be listenign to you speaking and their phones translating to their language for them. Not something I have ever used/tried - be interested to know how good/accurate they would/could be. It sounds like somethign that AI will be able to help with too?

Jonny95  
#7 Posted : 06 May 2025 07:58:13(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
Jonny95

Originally Posted by: Alan Haynes Go to Quoted Post
As someone who is retired for several years, can I ask a simple question. Is it OK these days to insist, when taking on new staff, to require that applicants have a basic understanding of English? We used to in the 'good old days'. Also made it a contractual requirement with Contractors and their subbies. I remember getting a subby removed as he spoke no English. Harsh, but how do you manage things, (not just safety), properly otherwise?

Hi Alan, I think this is 100% OK even though some others seem to disagree out of a fear of negative comeback of some kind.  We've not tried translating as speech but when we've had no choice to try our best we've resorted to google translate on a mobile, the most useful for when the training is document based so they can just use the camera to translate live. 

A Kurdziel  
#8 Posted : 06 May 2025 08:47:29(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
A Kurdziel

Reading the original post I suspect that person is not UK based but somewhere where English is not the main language, where foreign workers (including English speakers) are brought from all over the world.  Providing documents in their own languages would be useful but I would also be concerned about literacy levels amongst the workers and  how you translate H&S jargon in each language. What is the Thai wording for risk assessment, and does it mean the same thing as we believe it means in English?  You will need to invest in signage and use cartoons to illustrate procedures. Many year’s ago the US Army established that images are a better way to convey information than plain text.  You would have hoped that the local H&S agency would be providing this sort of material as it seems likely that this is not the only site where this is an issue but perhaps they have other priorities.

Edited by user 07 May 2025 08:15:56(UTC)  | Reason: missing word-apology for not being AI

peter gotch  
#9 Posted : 06 May 2025 11:19:18(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
peter gotch

Mohammed's profile indicates that they are in the Middle East whereas the responses so far all seem to be UK-centric, but I think the principles apply anywhere that society and, particularly those at work may come from different backgrounds.

Communications have always been an issue in the workplace for all aspects of what is to be done, so the question is how to tackle potential lack of understanding - in both directions.

I have recently finished "Paperboy" by Callum McSorley the second of new novels featuring the work of one police officer Alison McCoist, where when the first name is abbreviated to Ally it causes her some repeated nuisance when working in the West of Scotland. If you are into football at all the reason should be relatively obvious.

The book is written almost entirely in Glaswegian patter and I guess that half the population of the UK would have difficulty in understanding it when reading and a greater proportion if the words were actually vocalised. 

So, even if we imagined a workforce for all of whom their first language is English there are going to be problems with effective communication both in writing or verbally and the art is to consider what methods of getting a message across and understood will work.

Johnny commented:

I watched a site manager ask a supervisor to get an English-speaking foreign national to translate a simple task. Talk about Chinese whispers? how do you know the information you've just passed on is going to be relayed back to the other staff accurately, without it being simplified, or even being passed on at all?

But what if the person's first language was English but they were deaf and needed someone to use sign language (and assuming Johnny is not accomplished at doing that), would the H&S bod OR, more importantly, line manager, start by assuming that the message won't be adequately translated OR will they largely rely on a degree of trust?

That reliance on trust can be checked to a large extent by seeing what then transpires in practice - but this is not really much different to assessing whether communications done in English are put into effect at the sharp end. If as example the trainer speaking in English asks an audience all of whose first language is English whether they have understood what has been asked and they all nod, does this prove that they have all actually taken the message fully on board? - of course not!

AK points to pictures - exactly why we have international conventions for safety signs and symbols.

Yesterday I got an email and some photos from a mentee in the Middle East. There was a sign about the "Emergency Spill Kit". If the sign had looked even remotely like what a safety sign should have, perhaps the fact that the only language used was English might have been less of an issue.

Lots of projects in the Middle East with migrant labour from many countries, particularly in South East Asia, so inevitably a workforce split into people with different first languages. 

In such circumstances identifying someone who can understand the primary language of the project - perhaps English or Arabic - into what different parts of the workforce are familiar with becomes important.

However, exactly the same would apply if much of the project workforce in the UK may come from e.g. Eastern Europe. 

It's a problem, but not really any greater a problem than getting through to someone who is deaf, or perhaps has learning disabilities - gone are the days when the only employmenet opportunities in the UK for such people were in dedicated ghettoes set up for them only - hardly conducive to integrating them into the community.

firesafety101  
#10 Posted : 06 May 2025 11:39:46(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
firesafety101

Prior to the Qarar World Cup there was plenty of presentaions online aimed at the workers H&S in construction.  You may remember reports of very high numbers of fatalities and injuries reported by workers at new stadium sites.

I can't find them now but they contained excellent pictures to go alongside the words.

They must be there somewhere.

peter gotch  
#11 Posted : 06 May 2025 16:10:39(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
peter gotch

Hi firesafety

If we look at the General Principles of Protection aka hiearchy of control measures, communicating with workers is fairly low down the hierarchy.

Whilst I would imagine that inadequate communication was probably ONE of the causes of many of the fatlities, reported or not* on the various projects constructed for the Qatar World Cup, I doubt that it often SHOULD have been identified as being the primary cause - more likely usually a case of not having the right plant and procedures in place and excessive reliance on PPE.

Careful use of the word SHOULD as I imagine that many of the investigations that weere done after fatalities were fairly cursory, and if you want to conclude that an incident was due to the victim or someone working alongside them, then poor communicaton is an easy option to pick.

*Reasonable to assume that many incidents including those resulting in fatalities did not make it to the reported statisticcs. The number of fatalities recorded by the Qatari authorities was a tiny fraction of the number of body bags returned to families in the Indian sub-continent (let alone elsewhere), so many deaths were probably written off as having been "from natural causes".

So, as example, if worker dies from heart attack on site when the temperature is 40 degrees C, the bosses could ask whether the heart attack was the result of heat stress, or simply decide it was unfortunate, possibly make a very small payment to the victim's family and recruit another cheap migrant worker.

If you are the Safety Bod or a line manager in such a work environment and your own job security is perhaps fragile and one of the key performance indicators is about keeping numbers of incidents DOWN, there's a very strong motivator to bury bad news.

This is NOT something new. Massaging incident statistics has been going on for well over a century. All sorts of excuses are sought for NOT reporting - just look at the number of threads on these Forums about RIDDOR!!

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