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How well do you communicate with your Hispanic workers?
1 Jul, 2009 By: Barbara Mulhern LM Direct!When Maria Anaya sees a supervisor at Kujawa Enterprises, Inc. (KEI) struggling to use whatever Spanish he knows to communicate with a new Spanish-speaking employee, she realizes how much difference that makes.
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“This is very important. It lets them know that the supervisor is making an effort. It also makes our Spanish-speaking employees more comfortable trying to speak English once they see their supervisors trying to speak Spanish, even if they only know a little,” says Anaya, a bilingual Latina woman who serves as a liaison between Spanish-speaking workers and management at the Oak Creek, WI, landscape company.
Although Anaya’s “official” title is receptionist, KEI considers her invaluable in assisting Hispanic/Latino employees with issues ranging from new hire orientations to filling out incident/accident reports to translations of human resources and safety documents.
Nationwide, the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by the year 2050, one out of every four persons in the United States will be Hispanic — up from approximately one in eight in 2000. And the landscape industry, like many other industries, is seeing major growth in its numbers of Hispanic workers.
In 2006, more than 44% of the workers in the landscape services industry were Hispanic, compared to 16% of the total U.S. workforce, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) notes. Landscape services workers perform such tasks as landscape installation, maintenance, lawn care, tree care and snow removal. KEI, which has seen its Hispanic worker population increase tenfold in 10 years, estimates that as many as 65% of its crew members are Hispanic.
Spanish isn’t just Spanish
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Have you ever noticed that the phrases used by some of your Hispanic crew members are a little bit different than those of others? If so, it may be that they are speaking different dialects of Spanish. Chilean Spanish, for example, is quite different from the Spanish spoken in Mexico. And as more workers migrate to the U.S. from rural villages in Central and South America, employers are finding out that these workers’ Spanish is very different than that of workers from Mexico City or other urban areas. Even if you took Spanish when you were in high school, there’s a good chance your teacher taught you formal Spanish that is spoken in Spain.
This notwithstanding, one of the most important steps you can take to effectively communicate with your Spanish-speaking employees is to make sure that everything you do involving employees is translated orally into Spanish. “Always have a translator,” Anaya suggests. “We do this whenever we have meetings.”
But the use of Spanish alone will likely not be enough to effectively get your message across. One reason is because your Spanish-speaking workers who came to the U.S. from other countries may have limited literacy levels. In other words, they might not be able to read and write in Spanish — let alone in English. Your native Mexican workers, for example, may have been working in the fields from the time they were young and only attended school through kindergarten or third grade. This is important to understand so you know that these workers’ comprehension levels, even when you are training them orally, will not be the same as the comprehension level of employees who are high school or college graduates.
Other potential barriers to effective communication with your Hispanic workers include:
- Not understanding what “body language” is and is not acceptable.
- Assuming that because a worker can sign his or her name in Spanish, the person can read and write additional Spanish as well.
- Not speaking slowly and clearly when communicating, both in Spanish and English.
Working around the barriers
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What doesn’t work when trying to effectively communicate with your Spanish-speaking employees? “When you say, ‘OK, this is the supervisor you’re working with’ and it’s a done deal and that’s it,” Anaya says. “We have some guys who don’t speak English. Their supervisors will say, ‘This is what you are going to do’ in English. The crew members will say yes, they understand, but then the supervisor will find out they didn’t understand.”
Another bad idea is to trust the Spanish translations you can get at no cost from the Internet. These are often very different than the Spanish translations you want. If you are on a low budget, look to your own bilingual employees — especially those from the same countries/cultures — to translate for you. Or, if you don’t have anyone who can accurately translate written documents into Spanish, ask your insurer, industry trade associations or other companies in the industry who they use.
Here are more tips to help you improve communication with your Spanish-speaking employees:
- Use simple words, and don’t use slang or jargon — whether you are speaking in Spanish or in English.
- Pay attention to your “body language.” Know what is considered acceptable (such as a strong handshake or a pat on the back), and watch how close or far away a crew leader from the same country/culture as his crew members stands from them when he is talking to them.
- Prepare low literacy level materials in both Spanish and English. But always supplement them with visuals such as photos, graphics or illustrations.
- Train orally. Orally explain (in a language your workers understand) any sign-off sheets you need them to sign as documentation that they attended the training session. Include a statement in the sign-off sheet that reads: “This information was explained to me in a language and manner I understand.”
- Show your workers how to perform the tasks they will need to perform on the job. Then have them show you how they would do it before sending them out to the job site.
- Make use of your own bilingual employees, especially those from other workers’ same countries/cultures. Ask them to lead oral training sessions. Consider using one-on-one “mentors” (longer term Spanish-speaking employees) to assist new Spanish-speaking employees. Then provide your mentors with baseball caps that state: “Hablo Español.”
- Seek assistance from community organizations, churches and others that serve Spanish-speaking persons when needed. Find out whether English classes are available, and encourage your workers to learn some English — not just to help them with their jobs, but also with the rest of their lives. Also, find out where Spanish classes are offered, and encourage your managers and other supervisors to learn at least some basic phrases in Spanish.