Two-way communication
One health and safety practitioner agrees that the issue of literacy is critical to workplace safety, but notes that the more important aspect of this is ensuring that the workers can communicate back to the employer about issues related to safety.

This is particularly true when language barriers impede that ability to communicate, says Alan Quilley, president of Sherwood Park, Alta.-based OHS consulting firm, Safety Results Ltd. “We have to constantly think about not just getting the message to them, but how do you get it back.”

When it comes to workplace safety, employers have done a good job in communicating the message to their employees in a manner that they can understand, says Quilley. The challenge is getting the workers to communicate and articulate their questions and ideas about workplace safety “because that is really when safety excels.”

“If you’ve got some questions or if you’ve got some process input that you’d like to have on how we’re managing that, that’s also pretty important to the safety challenge,” he says.

When employers don’t pay attention to the need for enabling workers to communicate their thoughts about workplace health and safety policies —hiring a translator, for example — then that’s when communication break down happens, increasing the risk of injury or accidents.

“That, I think is the common shortcoming in all of these studies and all of these results, where we’re focused on the delivery and not on the feedback. Communication is two-way and that is the big problem, Quilley says.

Seven steps
Campbell says the study did look at “broader definition” of literacy and looked at both communication and language skills. “So there’s understanding the policies, and then there’s being able to act on them in emergencies and things like that.”

As a course of action for employers, the Conference Board recommends looking at their health and safety policies from a “literacy lens”.

In particular, the Conference Board outlines seven steps to take as an organizational action plan:

•    Review past incidents through “a literacy lens”
•    Review organizational health and safety policies and practices
•    Examine policies and practices from the perspective of an individual with lower literacy levels
•    Brainstorm solutions to help users understand health and safety documents
•    Measure and track health and safety incidents and improvements
•    Recognize outcomes
•    Reward efforts to improve literacy skills.