Workforce Language Services

As workplaces become more linguistically diverse, this question often comes up.  Diversityinc.com’s answer highlights using respect and commensense when decided when and where workers should use their native language:

“When you’re having a personal conversation with a colleague in a hallway or over lunch or at their desk, and you’re speaking in Spanish–as long as you’re doing it in a tone and in a way that’s professional, I think that’s fine,” advises Mims. “[It will be less offensive] when it’s done in the right time, in the right place and in the right way.”

It just seems strange that monolingual English speakers always automatically assume that people speaking another language are talking about them.  In most instances, people just revert to the language that they feel most comfortable with and as long as it’s not disrupting business or alienating potential customers, what’s the harm?

The reality of today’s workplace is that there will be many people with different native languages, and being inclusive of people who speak another native language is an important part of moving toward a diverse, culturally competent workplace. 

Katie Hunter offers commentary on Barack Obama’s suggestion that we start teaching our children Spanish in Juan Guillermo Tornoe’s Hispanic Trending blog.  No matter how loudly people protest the phenomenon of “press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish,” the fact is that Spanish-speakers are here to stay and their buying power is increasing. 

What does having 15 million Spanish speakers who don’t speak English “well” mean for us?

So here’s the translation: Those needs increase the demand for doctors, teachers, lawyers, writers, radio hosts, construction foremen, salesmen and many other types of blue and white collar U.S. workers who can speak Spanish. This need has already begun impacting hiring practices. Bilingual job fairs and Web sites are increasingly popular, and nearly half of corporate managers are starting to target Spanish-speaking job candidates. More schools have begun targeting Spanish-speakers too, even shelling out bigger bucks for bilingual teachers.

In the nonprofit sector, the ability to speak Spanish is often required and at least highly desired for many direct service positions.  I’ve also often seen a salary differential paid for those who are bilingual and trilingual. 

As we become more and more of a multilingual country, those who are willing to learn a new language are not only using their brains in new and beneficial ways, but are also increasing their ability to command a higher salary.

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.

Texas requires that all cadets in basic training take 16 hours of Spanish classes.  While 16 hours is hardly enough to learn to communicate in Spanish, at least it’s a start.  The Waco Police Department also has various strategies for overcoming the language barrier: they can dispatch a Spanish-speaking officer, have a bilingual dispatcher speak with the victim, or access a language line. 

The academy’s Spanish instructor explains the importance of having more police officers who are at least marginally proficient at Spanish:

“How much can anybody retain in 16 hours,” said Best, the MCC academy Spanish instructor. “You have to go out there and use it.”

In addition to those 16 state-required hours in basic training, officers are given additional state Spanish language requirements as they advance in their departments. And departments might have additional Spanish language requirements.

“I personally think it needs to be taught for an hour each day in basic training,” Best said.

She added, “We are making an effort. It’s important. Our job is to serve and protect all citizens. It helps to be able to communicate with everybody.”

To read the full article, click here.

George Diaz’s op-ed piece in the Orlando Sentinel lambasts the way an English-only rule was enforced in Florida’s Seminole County school cafeterias.  This blog recently linked to the news about the transfer of cafeteria workers after they failed to heed the application of the English-only in the workplace rule. 

As Diaz states, it didn’t have to turn out this way.  But as immigration has turned into a political and social battle, language use has become a symbol  for both sides. 

From Diaz’s piece:

Any workplace involves a mix of personalities, some of whom clash for various reasons. Language can be a volatile trigger point. As someone who’s bilingual, I’m cognizant of the barriers language can create.

It’s rude to constantly speak Spanish if it offends co-workers, but there’s nothing wrong with breaking out the espa�ol now and then. It’s not out of disrespect for my English-only friends. It’s out of respect for my Hispanic culture, and the inseparable ties that bind. Big difference.

Communication breakdowns happen. Maybe someone feels people are talking about them behind their back. Maybe someone feels they are being overwhelmed by another language. All valid issues.

In a perfect world (insert sarcasm here), both sides talk it out — in English — and the workplace continues its everyday grind. In a reactionary, intolerant workplace, you have Seminole school officials coming up with a bogus excuse to disguise the underlying problem of cultures clashing.

The situation in Seminole County has already hit the boiling point, but can serve as a lesson for other regions, companies, and industries: get cultural comptetency training in your place of business.  I’d hope that education about working with diverse staff would create a workplace environment in which people can work through language barriers rather than wage a political and cultural war because of it.

At a recent conference in California, the strengths of the Latino population as well as the challenges of ensuring their safety were discussed. 

The increase in workplace fatalities for Latinos has been discussed often recently in the media, an this article provided a few answers for making sure that Spanish-speaking construction workers become adequately trained:

• provide saftey signs in pictures, rather than words (many Mexican immigrants working in these industries are not literate in their native language)
• translate written safety materials into Spanish
• use bilingual supervisors to not only explain safety procedures, but to demonstrate them and provide time for questions and answers.

The article also gives an explanation for why Latinos may be resistent to following through with safety procedures:

“Strong Latino family ties and high work standards make them an asset to the community and employers,” Mr. Lopez said. “Latinos are willing to work hard and put in long hours – often without taking required breaks – to care for their families and do the best job for employers.”

However, this sometimes leads to risk taking and a sense of fearlessness – in order to please their bosses – without concern for consequences such as strains, hernias and even fatalities, Mr. Lopez said.

Click here for the full article.

As workplaces become more lingustically diverse, companies are trying to negotiate the balance between making sure all employees can communicate enough to do their jobs and respecting the fact that many employees represent linguistic minorities.  A recent Boston Globe article explores this balancing act, and uses the Tufts Medical Center’s English language learning program as an example.

Nora Moynihan Blake, who directs the housekeeping staff at the Medical Center, found that her staff often couldn’t communicate amongst themselves (within the staff, there are thirty separate languages spoken) nor with patients and visitors.  This has led to misunderstandings, and the staff’s lack of English language competency has stalled their upward mobility.  Blake was the catalyst for onsite English and GED classes.

The Tufts program is unusual. While 80 percent of companies employ workers whose deficiencies in English limit their ability to perform their jobs, only about a third provide remedial language training, and then mostly if a worker asks for help, according to a 2007 Conference Board survey of 70 senior corporate directors of training. “For a lot of companies, it’s a reactive rather than a proactive approach,” says researcher Chris Woock.

The article also raises the question of whether it’s insensitive for those with native languages other than English to communicate in them in front of English speakers at work.  To read more commentary on this question, click here.

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. — Several Seminole County school cafeteria workers have been told speaking Spanish made their workplace more dangerous. The workers were re-assigned following complaints that they used their native language on the job.Seminole County school district’s risk manager said it has an English-only policy in the kitchens because a lot of workers are suffering kitchen burns. If someone yells “cuidado,” which means “be careful” in Spanish, others might not understand.

Rather than educate and engage school cafeteria workers, this county’s school district chose to simply re-assign the Spanish-speaking offenders.  By taking a hard-line approach to safety in the cafeteria, the district certainly missed an opportunity for education and increased communication across cultures. 

If safety was such a deep concern, how hard would it have been for the employer to give a brief lesson on safety warnings in English and Spanish so that both groups could learn from the incident?  But the school district’s reassignment of the Spanish-speaking staff speaks more to its lack of cultural sensitivity than to its desire to create a safe working environment. 

To read the brief article, click here.

An article posted back in December on this blog showcased some of the strides that Chicago-based grassroots organizations are making in uniting Latino and Black workers as well as some of the struggles these two groups are facing as they are pitted against each other for jobs.  The organizations highlighted in the article are doing such important work: transforming the us vs. them mentality into an understanding that each group faces the same struggles.

In San Francisco, exactly the opposite is taking place at a low-income housing site.  An extremely ugly, racist, and discriminatory battle is being waged as Latinos and Blacks are being pitted against each other.  The litany of complaints against the employer is long and depressing and includes Latinos having to pay kickbacks and bribes to their supervisors, segregation of work crews, and the hiding of non-union workers when the carpenters’ union reps visited.

The display of anger and hatred that was allegedly orchestrated by the employer has had an interesting outcome:

But in San Francisco, even with the unemployment rate of African-American men hovering at three times that of Latino men, the alleged efforts at the AIMCO site to divide the two races instead had the opposite effect. The two groups have joined in a perhaps a uniquely American display of solidarity — suing their common enemy, the employer, as one.

To read the entire story, click here.

On a side note, also read the comments about the article.  The author incorrectly translated a phrase in Spanish into something in English that is much more incendiary than originally intended in Spanish and was severely taken to task.  This is a good example of the importance of translators truly understanding cultural context and the subtle nuances of both source and target language.

In both Escondido, California and Sherman, Texas police officers are beginning to take Spanish classes so as to better be able to communicate with limited English speaking residents. 

After twenty years of “dealing with the [communication] problem,”  Sherman police have decided to implement a plan for their mostly white, male officers to learn Spanish.  Even more interestingly officers will have members of the Latino community do ride-alongs with patrol officers:

In addition to the work on the computer and in the classroom, members of the Hispanic community, like Lupe’s Tamales owner John Arriazola, will be invited to ride along with the officers themselves to better understand one another.

“I think its going to be a great thing because it shows that the Sherman Police Department is sensitive to the needs of the Hispanic community.”

In a very brief blurb about Escondido’s Spanish classes starting in March, the hiring of a community-police liasion was also mentioned.  Mystifyingly, rather than get into depth about what kinds of issues the liasion might bring to police’s attention, the article ended with a statement solidying local police’s commitment to working with ICE and the Border Patrol to deport illegal aliens who break the law.  Once again, very real communication issues for those learning English are eclipsed by a discussion of illegal aliens.