Bridging The Communication Gap Among The Migrating Work force
By Hannah-Marie Miller
Editor’s Note: This article summarizes presentations made at AIHce 2003 as part of Roundtable 212,
sponsored by the Minority Special Interest Group.
With the shift in demographics has come an increased responsibility for corporate safety and health
professionals. Demographic changes impact the work force at linguistic and social levels. Foremost
among those changes is the challenge of implementing safety and health programs for a multilingual work
force, while avoiding the perception of racial and/or gender biases.
Demographic shifts have created communication barriers, which are one factor in the increase in
workplace accidents and fatality rates. Luis Santiago, area director with OSHA in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.,
discussed the significance of language in relation to the increased fatality rate among the Spanishspeaking work force. According to Santiago, between 1980 and 1990 the Hispanic population grew 53
percent—of which 250,000 people are undocumented.
Based on 2000 census data, the largest percentage increase of Spanish-speaking workers occurred in
the Midwest, South and West. In addition to the overall increase in Spanish-speaking workers, eight
states recorded in excess of 1 million non-English speakers, with the largest number from this group of
workers residing in California (12.4 million), Texas (6.0 million), New York (5.0 million), Florida (3.5
million), Illinois (2.2 million), New Jersey (2.0 million), Arizona (1.2 million) and Massachusetts (1.1
million) (U.S. Census 2000).
Safety and health professionals face the challenges of developing and implementing effective
environmental health and safety programs that are intelligible to the multicultural work force. The
challenge is to develop effective management tools for bridging the communication gap that exists among
those in the labor pool, in an effort to mitigate the negative impact the language gap has had on the
increased number of work-related fatalities and catastrophic events.
Commonly associated communication barriers are the lack of understanding of what is being spoken,
either due to dialectical variances/or language proficiency, illiteracy and cultural and social taboos. Paul
Haas, of Morse Associates, parlayed his experiences with developing and implementing safety programs
for construction projects where the predominant work force was non-English speaking. He estimates that
the greatest barrier to communication resulted from the following factors:
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Language barrier
Cultural bias—The job needs to get done and will be done
Respect—The job will be done as the boss has requested
Fear of reprisal and deportation
Limited or nonexistent training in a language the worker comprehends
Abuse—Some employers prey on disadvantaged workers
Regional language differences are less defined, such as with American regional dialects: Southern, New
England, Midwestern, etc. The new language spoken in the workplace is a mixture of broken English and
foreign dialects. English is no longer the common language spoken in the workplace. It is not unusual that
English is the least spoken language by production workers and in rare instances at the management
level.
Why There Is a Gap
Prior to evaluating the impact that a failed communication may have on ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the average worker, one must first understand the mechanics of language. Language is a string
of sounds used to form words or to signify concepts. Those words are arbitrarily linked to form sentences,
which may have varying meanings. The multiple meanings lead to sentence ambiguities that may be
structural or lexical, which may result in significant incidents, such as an occupational injury and/or illness
due to the unavailability of a native speaker of the language to proofread the text to ensure the meaning
is not lost in the translation. Lexical errors are derived from the many spoken dialects of a single
language. Every language has dialects and with each dialect comes a unique vernacular.
The vernacular spoken in the workplace is a pidgin. Linguists define pidgin as “a simple but rule-governed
language developed for communication among speakers of mutually unintelligible languages, often based
on one of those languages. With a pidgin, the diverse groups use their native language(s) as a basis for a
rudimentary language, thereby forming a ‘marginal language.’” 1
Oral communication is the preferred method for implementing programmatic policies and procedures.
Safety and health manuals and brochures serve as “trophy” documents. Safety and health manuals
written at the 12th-grade reading level are ineffective for a work force where the average reading level
may range from third- to eighth-grade.
For speakers of languages other than English who claim to speak English, one could reasonably assume
those individuals understand English, but does the individual’s proficiency meet the level required to read
and/or speak proficiently to understand materials written at the ninth-grade reading level, let alone a
technical document? The jargon spoken in the workplace is a language of its own. Often the most wellintended document is misleading and, therefore, proves to be ineffective.
Language Competency Versus Proficiency
Ineffective communication has become more noticeable in the composition of the American work force. In
an attempt to implement English-based safety and health programs in a non-English-speaking workplace,
the EHS professional, in general, will designate a bilingual worker, who may be marginally intellectual
than the mass population, to serve as the official interpreter/translator for spoken and written
communications within the workplace.
An irony exists because the EHS professional trusts the translation to be semantically correct. The
effectiveness of the best-written EHS program is questionable in a work environment where the majority
of languages spoken are not English.
Linguists make a clear distinction between the linguistic competency and linguistic performance.
Linguistic competency is defined as one’s knowledge of a language, and linguistic performance is one’s
demonstrated use and comprehension of a language. Therefore, it is not uncommon for an individual to
be competent and have marginal performance in the language being spoken. This difference creates a
hidden language barrier that results in the intended messages being misinterpreted and much worse,
misunderstood; both may result in less than desirable outcomes.
In general, the person administering the safety and health program is a native speaker of English, who
may have competencies in one or more languages. The competency, however, states nothing about the
language proficiency of the individual. The effectiveness of these programs is contingent on how well the
program is articulated to the workers. The ability to effectively communicate with workers depends greatly
on the linguistic competency, as well as the linguistic performance of the program administrator and the
worker.
In further attempts to minimize the language barrier, EHS professionals purchase commercial language
translation software programs and/or language Web sites to translate the prescribed text into the desired
language. While some commercial programs are excellent, many render literal translations (primarily due
to lexical errors) that are incomprehensible. It is important that the lexicon consist of commonly used
industrial terms and jargon.
Cultural Barriers
The ready supply of cheap labor is often composed primarily of non-English speaking, and in many
instances, illiterate workers. Traditionally, the less educated worker tends to accept those jobs that are
labor-intensive and pose the greatest risk of exposure to hazardous substances. The tasks are often
mundane and repetitive. The workers most likely to choose these jobs are persons who are illiterate, have
limited English or are experiencing social ills.
Santiago stated, “Adjusting to a new culture is difficult, getting a good job will be difficult and getting a
good paying job will be easier if you accept doing things others would not. This population of workers is
less apt to request clarification of poorly understood terms, instructions, etc., out of fear of appearing
stupid. In some instances, questions are never asked because it may lead to the discovery of the
workers’ illiteracy.”
Now more than ever, the depth of communicating extends beyond oral and written communication; it
extends to one’s understanding cultural taboos and cultural sensitivities. For instance, multinational
corporations and international agencies effectively use the skills of behavioral scientists and linguists to
aid in the implementation of health and safety programs.
Gerald Onyema Dike, who is an industrial hygienist with the Michigan Department of Consumer and
Industry Services, was born in Nigeria and views the relationship of the EHS professional to the worker as
that of customer. He states, “The workers are his/her true ‘customers’ with whom he/she is compelled to
communicate effectively on a daily basis. Some of our customers may have been born and raised in
different parts of the world and under different cultures. They may speak different languages or dialects.
They may also have different perceptions and interpretations of certain verbal phrases, gestures/signals
and body languages based on their cultural upbringing. This is more so attributable to some foreign-born
immigrants who have either recently arrived or are relatively new in the United States. It is important that
safety and health professionals are aware and cognizant of these issues, and adopt effective means of
communication with these workers in order to better protect them from real and potential health and
safety hazards in the workplace.”
Haas offered several feasible means for bridging the communication gap for minority employees on
construction-related projects:
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Ensure safety requirement content is included in the safety and health programs rendered by the
subcontractor.
Ensure competent persons can speak key phrases; for example, “Usted no use el scaffold en
este manera.”
Ensure employees have a basic knowledge of OSHA requirements.
Ensure employees understand the construction jargon.
Strive for recognition of hazards through repetition of concepts.
Ways to Bridge the Gap
A communication gap diminishes organizational cohesiveness. To ensure the effectiveness of any safety
and health program, management should consider using bridging tools to stimulate communication. In
other words, rather than isolating ethnic groups based on their unique languages, the organization may
be better served in the creation of a workplace pidgin for each ethnic group and based on the various
language origins.
The development of a workplace pidgin, as well as uniform understanding or safety and health policies
and procedures, narrows the communication gap. A workplace pidgin may minimize the need, and lessen
the costs associated with the publication of brochures in multiple languages. It may establish the
rudimentary level of understanding of safe operating use of job-related equipment and machinery
notwithstanding the person’s literacy level. In addition to the pidgin, the reliance on graphic representation
of common hazards would immediately alert the novice to situations that must be avoided at all costs.
Management officials can capitalize on the pidgin as an effective communicate tool.
Through the incorporation of two simple linguistic tools—pidgins and photographs—the EHS professional
has greater latitude in developing more realistic programs that are fully understood and appreciated by a
global work force. These tools are likely to achieve global acceptance thereby becoming readily
transferable across domestic and international boundaries.
In conclusion, challenges facing the EHS professional in relation to implementing effective safety and
health programs in the workplace have been increased by factors directly relating to the breakdown in
communication between employers and workers. The factors are directly related to language barriers,
cultural insensitivity and lack of training. While the EHS professional is not expected to have the magic
solution to overcome the challenges of bridging the communication gap within the workplace, there are
tools available to improve the working conditions of non-English-speaking workers.
The Minority SIG is committed to increasing the level of awareness of the EHS community to the plight of
non-English-speaking workers, as well as to showcasing case studies where employers have taken a
proactive stance in reducing the communication gap. Future articles on this topic will highlight actual case
studies featuring a unique language group and the tools the affected employer is implementing to bridge
the communication barrier in the workplace.
Miller is chair of the AIHA
Minority Special Interest Group.