Protect The Safety Of Your International Workers
If you employ workers from overseas, multilingual signs can help to ensure the health and safety of your workforce.
Each year, more than 3 million people are injured at work, or suffer from illnesses that are caused by or exacerbated by their employment. And, tragically, over 200 people are killed in workplace accidents every year. With this in mind, preventing accidents and ill health should be a key priority for all business-owners.
Your Obligations
As a UK employer you have a legal obligation to safeguard the health and safety of your employees. As part of this, your employees need to understand the basics of health and safety in the workplace, and you have a responsibility to educate your staff in this area. Failure to comply with these obligations could result in significant personal, social and financial costs to you, your employees and your business.
There are a number of ways to keep your employees informed and educated about health and safety. Training is one of the most important of these, and health and safety awareness courses can teach your staff how to protect themselves and each other in the workplace, helping to foster a positive health and safety culture within your organisation.
Signage can also play a key role in providing workers with easy and regular access to important health and safety information, such as notification of first aid procedures, warnings of potential hazards and instructions for operating machinery or equipment in a safe manner.
Overseas Workers
Training, preparation and information are vital when it comes to protecting your employees and meeting your obligations under the law. However, if some of your employees are from overseas, there are additional factors to consider.
Recent research carried out by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has discovered that migrant workers are a particularly vulnerable group of employees. This is due to a number of factors, including the fact that many migrant workers tend to work in more dangerous industries such as farming and construction, and that they often have a limited knowledge of UK health and safety standards. But one of the most important factors is the fact that some overseas workers have difficulties understanding spoken or written English – which in turn can lead to inadequate communication and potentially dangerous situations. Custom construction safety signs and farming signs can be made so that your migrant workers are aware of the dangers on site.
So, if your workers do not have a good understanding of English, how can you ensure that they have the information they need to carry out their work safely?
Multilingual Signs
One recommended solution is to ensure that all health and safety training and information is provided in the workers’ language (or languages) of choice.
Health and safety signs in particular should be provided multilingually as they often need to be read and understood quickly in order to avoid incidents from occurring. And, indeed, the HSE has found that poor comprehension of signs or signals is often a key risk factor when it comes to the safety of migrant workers.
As well as providing multilingual signs, it’s also worth considering commissioning custom signs which communicate important information through images rather than with text – this approach can also prove helpful if you have any English-speaking workers on site with a low level of literacy. Signs such as machinery hazard signs and no access signs should be present and easily understood.
When it comes to developing or reviewing health and safety policies for your company, it’s vital that you take your foreign workers into consideration. Communicating effectively is an essential aspect of health and safety – and failure to do so increases the risk of accidents or injury.
Our customised service makes it easy for you to produce signs that meet the communication needs of your workers. And having effective health and safety signs in place could be the difference between a safe work environment and the occurrence of a serious workplace incident.