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Posted By Larry Shannon
Non-nationals working as ESP( building, cleaning catering etc) in Pharma sector, with poor or no English.
How have other dealt with inductions, paperwork
etc.
The site involved 350 onsite, maybe upto 100 ESP's , ongoing refurbishment, upgrading etc.
External contractors finding it harder and harder to get English speaking labour
tks.
Larry
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Posted By Bob Youel
pay proper wages and you will get the right people
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Posted By Larry Shannon
hmm, hardly the response one expected.
The Irish construction sector requires all the employees it can find, low wages are a thing of the past.
As a world class facility I rather think the contractors we use fully comply with all agreements and conditions.
My question was to get advice from others in the Pharma sector , who have to use construction workers and others, how do they reconcile the obvious need for excellent standards of EHS, with the construction/catering industries reliance on fellow European but not English speaking workforce.
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Posted By I McDonald
Larry
worked on many projects with multi-national and cultural workforce. Couple of options really:
1 - Identify a ratio of bi-lingual to non-English speaking (i.e. 1 bi-lingual supervisor for every 6 operatives). Bi-lingual them translates information to workforce;
2 - Get all relevant information (induction, etc) translated and employ bi-lingual "Safety Reps/Trainers/etc);
It is a difficult one but it can be managed. I recently left a project were 10 other languages were identified (English was the 11th language) we managed it well enough.
Ian
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Posted By Chris Packham
I did some work last year with a company employing large numbers of temporary workers, mainly from eastern Europe. The way they handled this was that the workers worked in teams, each of which had a leader who could speak reasonable english. It was the team leader's task to pass on information, messages, etc. to his team. They also had various items of information in the appropriate language, but it seemed to me that the critical aspect was the team approach.
Chris
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Posted By karina brady1
hi larry,
I worked for a major construction company in Ireland who employed a large number of foreign nationals. We had the site rules, medical questionnaires and the Induction DVD translated into polish, Romanian, and Russian. This worked well for us and also seemed to go down well with the workers in question.
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Posted By Andy Brazier
I totally agree with Chris. It is most important that someone can translate. This may require you to restrict which nationalities you recruit, for example only taking on Polish workers.
With a multi-lingual workforce you should consider difficult communication in all your risk assessments. That will give you a good idea of how serious an issue it is.
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Posted By Seth
Larry,
Although I work in the Utilities Industry, I think I can answer a few of your questions. I was tasked, in September 06, to carry out Inductions and training to Polish employees. This was the first time that the Company had utilsed foreign workers therefore, there were no training materials i existence. Luckily we have a Polish lady (Agata) working for the Company who translated all training courses, which I present. Agata assists with the presentations by translating all of the additional information that I talk about, expansion of the presentation and translates any questions that the attendees have. I have also learnt basic conversational Polish, which is bloody hard!!! but well worth while as I find it puts the attendees at ease and creates a bit of rapour (showing that I have at least attempted to learn a bit of Polish, even if I do slip up from time to time).
We have found that this format works well and competency test are carried out at the end of each course.
I have also found that, in my view, due to the obvious disadvantage the employees are at, they tend to pay more attention.
I do particularly enjoy doing this training and am now considering becoming fluent in Polish and specialising in this area.
If you require any further info, don't hesitate in contacting me.
Best regards
Seth
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