The importance of bilingual safety training

RCS Influencer Trent Cotney says that bilingual training is hugely important since OSHA, or your state equivalent, is going to ask if you have safety materials in a language that everybody can understand.

Megan Ellsworth: Hello, everyone. My name is Megan Ellsworth, and I am here at rooferscoffeeshop.com, back again for an influencer response for the month of July. And I'm here with Trent Cotney. Hello.

Trent Cotney: Hey, good to see you again.

Megan Ellsworth: Good to see you. So this month's topic is all about bilingual training. The question is, what are you doing for bilingual training and what would you suggest be done if people wanted to bring in bilingual training to their company?

Trent Cotney: Yeah, absolutely. So I think bilingual training is incredibly important for any contractor that's out there. Clearly from a safety perspective, one of the things that OSHA or the state equivalent's going to ask for is, do you have safety materials, your safety manual, your Toolbox Talks, all that kind of stuff in a language that everybody can understand? Obviously, Spanish tends to be the primary second language, but there are plenty of other crews that speak different languages. So having that material and that language is incredibly important.

In addition to that, we get tasked all the time with drafting contracts in Spanish to drafting employee manuals and standard operating procedures in Spanish or other languages. And I think that's really important because you want to be able to effectively communicate and show that you have effectively communicated in case a government agency or somebody from the outside is looking in and saying, "Okay. Well, I see you got these rules, but if they can't understand them, how good are they?" Right? So yeah, definitely important. And the good thing is, with technology, it's made things a lot easier. The translate software isn't perfect, so still got to go over it and check it, but it'll get you up 85, 90%, so.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, absolutely. Let me reframe this. How should people use this software? Should they start with software? Should they hire someone to start with bilingual training? Where do you think-

Trent Cotney: Yeah, so I'll tell you what we do. You know?

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah.

Trent Cotney: We have lawyers that are bilingual. We have staff that's bilingual, paralegals that are bilingual. I had a minor in Spanish and can read it decent, and I'm okay, but by no means am fluent. What I like to do is I will run anything that I want to translate through Google Translate or similar translate program. And then, I will go through it. And I can tell you from personal experience where those translation things fail are terms of art.

So in roofing, if they're very specific things about laying tile or something like that. They may use the wrong words or it may not convey the same meaning. So it's important to kind of go through and make sure that you are checking that. Again, I think it'll get you 85 to 90% of where you got to go, but definitely want someone that is going through it and checking it before you roll it out. Because even though those programs have gotten significantly better than even five years ago, they're not perfect.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Trent, for answering this month's question. And I look forward to hearing your answer next month.

Trent Cotney: Always.

Megan Ellsworth: Always. Awesome. We'll see you next time.

Trent Cotney: Thanks.