Workforce Language Services

Some companies strive for a diverse workforce because they think it’s the right thing to do.  Other companies grudgingly do so because of Equal Employment Opprotunity mandates.  Still others find that having a diverse workforce all through the ranks is a smart business decision. 

A recent piece in Business Week makes the case for the third reason for crafting a diverse workforce.  Companies want to sell their products or services, right?  Authors G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Luis Viton urge companies to create a workforce that mirrors their target audience to sell more and continue to create innovative products and services.

They offer a three part argument for sustaining a competitive advantage:

1. Understanding. If your workforce mirrors the diverse demographics and cultural aspects of your customers, you are bound to have a better understanding of your audience. (Providing you encourage all those unique voices to contribute. If all you are doing is counting heads—”let’s see we employ 53% women, 11% blacks, 16% Hispanics…yep, we’re covered; now let’s have the same old people at the top make all the decisions as they always have in the same old ways”—you have not gained a thing.)

2. Credibility. If your workforce looks like the people you are trying to reach, you increase the odds of closing the sale. Let’s use a simple example to make the point. From whom would 22-year-old guys want to buy their $85 athletic shoes? A 63-year-old grandmother or a 22-year-old guy?

3. Connectedness. And if your workforce is the same as the people you are trying to reach, you are bound to be closer to them at all times, which give you a leg up on the competition.

Of course, simply mining diverse talent for ideas isn’t enough, and that’s where cultural competency training comes in.  A company won’t be able to sustain this competetive advantage if it doesn’t take into account the need to integrate diverse employees into the overall business structure.  A company won’t be successful if it doesn’t stress inclusiveness and understanding into its policies and management practices.

Cultural competency training will enable your business to not only sustain sales to diverse populations, but will also allow you to keep the employees you seek to include, thus bolstering sales and increasing employee buy-in.

The higher rate of workplace deaths for Latinos than for all other racial and ethnic categories has been well-documented.  But South Carolina has the highest rate of workplace deaths in the nation, 23 workers out of 100,000.  Compare this to Oklahoma’s death rate, which is second highest with 10 Latinos out of 100,000 losing their lives on the job.

The disparity is attributed to the newness and explosive growth of the Spanish-speaking immigrant population:

Hispanic workers’ growing presence in the workplace has likely led to a communications and training disconnect, making workplace conditions more treacherous than in other states, Lacy said.

“There’s a lot we have to learn when we move somewhere new,” she said. “Imagine moving to a different country and having to learn (different workplace rules), with everything in a different language.”

States with a longer history of immigration likely have a better, safer workplace system in place, Lacy said. In California, for example, Hispanic workers who work alongside more experienced Spanish-speaking workers might find it easier to learn how to operate a piece of machinery or the safest way to climb a ladder, Lacy said.

Also, Hispanic workers who are migrating to South Carolina are coming mainly from southeastern Mexico, a part of the country where, traditionally, fewer residents have crossed the U.S. border for work, Lacy said. Since the concept of immigration is newer there, that might also lead to a disconnect.

“If you’re coming from an area of Mexico that doesn’t have a long history of immigration, you’re not going to have a lot of information about working or living in the U.S.,” Lacy said.

To read more about this unfortunate phenomenon and steps taken to remedy the situation, click here.

More hospitals are offering Spanish classes alongside traditional classes teaching clinical skills in major New York hospitals for their resident physicians.  The move toward providing doctors with training in Spanish is both practical (it can be difficult to find interpreters during certain shifts and patients prefer to speak directly with a doctor that speaks their native language) and cultural. 

One of the Spanish instructors at Yeshiva University’s medical school stressed the importance of cultural sensitivity in patient care as well as the need to beware of using slang terms with patients:

Still, according to Ms. Marzan, of Einstein, stressing cultural sensitivity is also key. For example, some immigrants take herbal supplements to treat their ailments. Patients might also describe symptoms in a way that doctors are not accustomed to. For example, describing pain as being felt everywhere might mean the patient feels a lot of pain, and pain that is described as moving from the stomach to the chest to the face may be a reference to nausea.

Slang should also be taken into account. During the language lesson at NewYork-Presbyterian, students were taking turns naming parts of the human form when one doctor mistakenly used a casual word for buttocks. Laughing, Mr. Shane corrected him. “‘Culo’ is basically ‘ass,’” he said. “You would never say that to a patient.”

To read the full article, click here.

An article in the Chicago Tribune and another in the Washington Post detailed increasing unemployment rates for Latinos working in the construction industry.  Both articles shared stats found in a recently released report from the Pew Hispanic Center. 

Despite the rise in unemployment, Hispanic immigrants did not appear to be returning to their native countries in significant numbers. Those who have lost their jobs tend instead to seek other work in the United States, the report said.

“For now, at least, we do not find any signs that they are discouraged enough to go back home,” said Rakesh Kochhar, associate director of research at the Pew Hispanic Center and author of the report. “They are remaining active.”

The Washington Post article also mentions that Latinos are not sending as much money to their home countries as they once were, and currently only 50 percent of those surveyed were able to regularly send money home as opposed to 73 percent two years ago.

An Arkansas man who was tried for a DUI signed a court waiver translated into Spanish with a very different meaning.  Last February, his lawyer challenged the court’s decision because what he signed wasn’t what the court intended he sign.  How did this happen?  Because of a bad translation, one that was never caught, even though the waiver had been in use for years:

“We all just assumed the waiver was correct,” Rogers lawyer Doug Norwood said. “I did, the judge did, everyone did. Now, come to find out we’ve been stumbling around in the dark for years, and the thing is hideously wrong.” Norwood said the waiver was translated years ago by a court clerk who wasn’t certified by the state, although she spoke Spanish.

The issue is with the word assume.  Many monolingual language speakers simply assume that a document is correctly translated, when in fact, if a certified, qualified translator isn’t used, the exact opposite can be the case.

A certified court interpreter was quoted in the article:

“You would never say ‘crimen’ for a misdemeanor,” Simmons said. “Now, you’re raising a misdemeanor to a felony.” The word “annual,” can be mistranslated to “anus” if an accent mark isn’t placed over the letter “n,” she said. “If all you do is pick up a dictionary or go online to translate, the meaning can be lost,” she said. “A literal translation can mean nothing like what it should.”

To read the complete article, which includes the court’s take on the situation, click here.

In Mesa, Arizona the police department has turned to volunteers to assist monolingual 911 dispatchers when Spanish-speakers call in.  The reasoning for suspending use of the Language Line (a for-profit interpretation service) is the budget crisis that so many municipalities are facing:

In 2006, Mesa spent $118,000 to translate calls that weren’t in English. And in the first four months this year, the city has spent $28,000. Most of the calls were in Spanish.

With only five certified Spanish-speaking operators out of 120, the communications center often relies heavily on a program called Language Line.

The program allows dispatchers to connect with translators for most of the world’s languages. However, as the need for translation services rises and the city faces tighter budgets, new ideas — like using volunteers — are becoming necessary.

“During lean times, it’s the creative ideas that are working,” said Cari Zanella, public safety communications administrator. “For us, it’s a perfect fit. Volunteers want to help and our 911 center can use the help.”

Police Chief George Gascón came up with the idea for the volunteer program after department analysts figured out how much translation services were costing the city.

I’m a bit torn over this move.  There’s an obvious need for translation services for 911 calls, and I do understand that something’s got to give when there are budget cuts.  But I can’t help but wonder why, in a major metropolitan area in a state with huge numbers of Spanish-speakers, only five out of 120 dispatchers speak Spanish?  I don’t think that moving towards use of volunteers is necessary, as the article states, but I do think that recruiting more bilingual paid employees is necessary.

To read the entire article, including quotes from one of the volunteers, click here.

When I was teaching English as a Second Language to low-income mothers in a family literacy program, I’d often become horrified as the mothers shared with me stories of frustration and miscommunication during their visits to the local health care clinic.  Often there’d be no one to explain in Spanish during doctor’s visits and on the occasions that there were, the clinic would simply grab a bilingual person to help out since there were very few certified interpreters on staff.

 The Rush-Copley Medical Center in Aurora, Illinois is making sure that these situations never occur in their facility:

“We are going to celebrate the [interpretation] program’s 30th anniversary this June,” says Diane Moreau, BA, BS, director of patient support services and a Spanish interpreter. “We have eight full-time interpreters who are able to cover all shifts in the operation of the hospital.”

Moreau’s interpreters see 75 to 80 patients a day, and they spend 30 minutes on average with each patient; however, sessions easily can be two or three hours long.

“The area where the most help is needed is triage and the ER,” she says. “Clear communication is very important, especially if the patient is in pain. The faster we gather information on the patients’ conditions, the faster we can give them the care they need.”

The other area where interpreters are in high need is during patient discharge.

“Discharging a patient can easily take an hour and a half, and the interpreters are present to make sure patients understand every detail about their condition and what they need to do after leaving the hospital,” says Moreau. “It’s much better to have the interpreter in the room because teaching or demonstrating something over the phone is very difficult. We can’t ignore the importance of nonverbal communication, either.”

The Nurse.com article also brings up the point that Latinos are underrepresented in the medical field, thus increasing the difficulty of providing cultural competent medical care in a patient’s native language.  One tactic would be to recruit bilingual Latinos into the medical field so that patients could speak directly to the care provider in Spanish rather than rely on a third-party, albeit highly qualified, interpreter.

In a recent paper in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Neil Powe, M.D., M.P.H. states: “It’s time to get serious about equitable health care for all of us.”  Both this paper and another recent paper enumerated the various disparities in the prevention and care of chronic kidney disease. 

The Medical News article offers a systematic approach to closing disparities in care based on race, native language, and socio-economic class, including increasing research on what drives these disparities, fostering a sense of personal responsibility in caregivers, and advocating for change in health care policies. 

Exerpted from the article:

“We should also embrace our responsibility to become aware of situations where disparities exist and be attentive to our biases in interacting with patients or providing the services they need,” he said.

Drs. Norris and Nissenson wrote that communication between the healthcare community and patients needs to improve through a renewed emphasis on training professionals to eliminate disparities. In particular, there should be a stronger focus on cultural competency at the individual and system level.

I particularly like the fact that Drs. Norris and Nissenson advocate for cultural competency both at the individual and system level.  Focusing on the nexus of the two will create both a sense of personal responsibility for increased attention to healing these disparities and will offer institutionalized support of moving towards cultural competency. 

Tacoma, Washington just hired the city’s first Hispanic community liaison, a move that many said was overdue since the Latino population has been increasing.  The new liaison was introduced at a community forum:

Sabin said people of Hispanic descent who are new to the area – including immigrants from Mexico, Central America and South America – may feel isolated. She wants to incorporate them into the larger Federal Way community. The city invited members of the Hispanic community to a luncheon at City Hall Wednesday to introduce Sabin. The response exceeded the city’s expectations with more than 100 people turning out.

One purpose of the gathering was to ask people how Sabin can serve them.

Interestingly enough, a Latino community member and advocate objected to the choice of liaison since she is white and not Latino.  He commented that she will face a struggle to understand Latino culture so as to be able to do her job well.  His comment is, in a way, extremely short-sighted and doesn’t address the fact that Hispanic culture is diverse.  Many recent immigrants from Latino countries themselves find it necessary to adjust to different cultural aspects and attitudes of those who hail from other Spanish-speaking countries. 

As a bilingual Caucasian, I have also faced the same resistence from members of the Hispanic community that the new liaison will face.  But I have found that through relationship building and communication, these barriers can be overcome and trust can be established with time. 

To read more details, click here. 

A recent article in an Iowa newspaper details the art and difficulties behind providing interpretation services for the courts. 

The journalist interviewed federal court interpreters during breaks in the proceedings against almost 400 Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants who were detained in a raid:

Translators are “performance artists,” Xavier Keogh of St. Petersburg, Fla., said.

“We are artists. We play the role of everyone, the judge, defendant and the attorneys,” he said, grinning with his arms open, giving a virtual thespian bow. “We wear all these hats and everyone has a different perspective.”

The article reiterates the fact that interpreters are not simply bilingual, but are highly trained professionals:

Lilley said a translator must know many things in order to do an accurate and fair job. Many times a judge phrases something that doesn’t come out right or make sense in Spanish. The translator must then be able to put the verb in another place or use another word, without changing the meaning, to make it comprehensible for the defendant.

The golden rule is to never change the meaning of what the judge, attorney or defendant says, all the translators agreed. They also agreed they don’t favor the court or defendant. They are the neutral party that ensures nobody is “lost in translation.”

Another recent article from a Wisconsin newspaper homed in on the importance of qualified, court-certified interpreters: a defendant can appeal a decision made by the courts if he didn’t understand what was going on in court.  By using state certified interpreters in Wisconsin, it’s less likely that an appellate court would overturn a decision. 

The Wisconsin article also explained the state’s certification process and listed the costs of having interpreters on staff.

To read the complete article, click here.