Objectives of the Paper
Question:
Is communication in WSH principles and practices amongst the foreign supervisory workforce in the Workplace affected by English language proficiency and appreciation?
The prime aim of the discussion paper is to understand if knowledge and proficiency in the English language affect the workplace health and safety. English, without doubt, is the actual professional language in the multicultural workplace and it is universally accepted language (Wright 2015). English is most used language communicating in a maximum number of countries. Hence, being able to communicate in the language is essential for understanding the opinions, views and as well as communicating with others properly and executing tasks efficiently. The current paper aims to understand the impact of the knowledge of English language on occupational health and safety.
The objectives of the paper are essentially
- To understand the effect of knowledge on the English language on the workplace environment in terms of workplace health and safety issues
- To recognise the impact of English language on proper communication different of aspects of the WSH
- To decipher how the understanding WSH principles and practices among the foreign workforce is affected by this proficiency
- To understand properly if the people who are either bilingual or proficient in the English language have an advantage over the people who speak other languages
- To establish the fact that the people who go to Singapore from other countries as workers have better health care services and can avail better WSH if they can communicate in English.
As stated by Yamao and Sekiguchi (2015), in their article,every employer has the moral and legal responsibilities to provide the workers with a safe working environment. The authors hypothesised that in a multinational organisation headquarters-subsidiary communication enhances through language proficiency and shared the vision. The authors collected data from 574 middle managers in functional departments of some of the foreign subsidiaries in Japan. The employers also are responsible to provide the workers with the information and instructions for following the WSH. Moreover, they also have to give the proper training regarding the same in proper languages, so that they understand the necessities to maintain a healthy working environment. This would help the employees put forwards any suggestions or complains from their end as well. The employees must be given training and instructions in languages other than English (Yamao and Sekiguchi 2015). However, since English is the most commonly used language, it serves as the best medium.
As opined by Knoch et al. (2015), in their article,the importance of language has been talked about for a long time. The very necessity of language is to establish communications between humans and choosing the right language is also vital. In the healthcare sector, workplace health and safety are important for the professionals and they also use writing. This article is based on mainly case study analysis and local languages’ importance has been justified. In Australia, internationally educated nurses can speak English and they come from mainly China, Korea, India and Philippines (Knoch et al. 2015). English is considered to be a universal language and hence, it should be the medium of communication when working abroad. Learning native languages can be a problem for many and English would be the best option in these cases.
Baker (2016), stated in his article that unless both the employee and employer are proficient in English, a huge communication gap will exist and hence, this would cause severe problems in negotiating the terms as well as properly understand the views of both the parties. In inter-culture communication, English as lingua franca takes a special place in order to conceptualise the dynamic standpoint of workplace health and safety in terms of communication. The author has conducted the study in secondary data collection basis taking information from books, journals and previous researched articles. Qualitative data analysis has been done to establish the ideas. If the instructions are not clear enough, there may arise problems in the future regarding the assigned responsibilities or negligence in the execution or being unable to adhere to the regulations. A good knowledge and command over the English language could eradicate these issues and make sure that everyone understands their roles and what they need to do to make sure that WSH is maintained in a correct manner (Baker 2016). Depth in the knowledge of the language can hence make sure that no employee is harmed simply due to failure to understand the requirements or simply not being able to follow the instructions that they were given.
The Importance of Communication in Workplace Health and Safety
Even though the foreign employers are supposed to give the instructions and training in languages other than English, it is the most used medium in daily work and for this matter. Failing to understand the language can cause serious damages, both to the employee as well as the organisation (McDonough and McDonough 2014). In previous studies or surveys, participants have been asked to elaborate themselves on the issues they perceive as a problem for them not being able to communicate properly in English. When workers go from one country to another, English is generally the common medium of communication, and the lack of the ability to communicate in proper English leads to these problems. Survey participants have been asked to understand the problem on their own accord and how do they think they can improve the situation (Yao and Van Ours 2015). The previous methods would be helpful in forming the survey methods and formulate the survey questions in the current paper.
As above-mentioned, knowledge and proficiency in English can help employees enormously when it comes to understanding the WSH requirements and therefore being able to adhere to the regulations. The topic has been so chosen because it constitutes a major problem in the health and safety regulations overall. In the current world, every country has some workforce who is from another country (Knoch et al. 2015). This makes it inevitable that communication gaps would be present. While it is not at all easy to ensure that every person knows the language of every other person, English could serve as the bridge that could be sued by everyone so that every aspect is at least conveyed to each other. This alone could prove to be beneficial. Unless a proper communication is established, it is equally impossible to fully comprehend the regulations and country-specific WSH policies or what are the implications of the same (Murray and Hicks 2016).
This paper would help an individual to understand the importance of WSH and also establish the necessity of being efficient is the use of English language to use the knowledge as a medium to communicate in the workplace and also to conform to the health and safety regulations. The task would also enable a person to understand the expanse of WSH properly and also how it may be used for assuring a person a secured working environment. This would also help to understand the importance of proper communication, specifically, efficiency in the English language and how that enable a person to better avail the WSH advantages can.
- To understand the necessity of English in workplace and the importance of making English a common mode of communication.
- To understand the usage of the primary and secondary data to understand the scenario and its outcomes.
- The methods of collecting the primary and secondary data from the trusted sources and analysing them.
- To understand the use of literature and earlier research works to strengthen the research.
Data and study type
For the purpose of the current study, a mixture of both primary and secondary data would be used. The interviews and survey that would be conducted with the participants would serve as the primary data, while related articles and peer-reviewed journals would act as the secondary data. The study would be analytical in nature, with a primary focus on the knowledge on the language and relating to the WSH norms to understand if the employees who do not speak very good English fare equally to those who do, or not.
Responsibilities of Employers in Ensuring Workplace Health and Safety
Design
Workers from five different companies would be gathered and a simple questionnaire would be provided to them that are aimed specifically at trying to understand their depth in the knowledge of the language and their capabilities to communicate using the language.The five selected industries would be the electricity industry, IT and technological solutions, HR representatives from the hospitality sector, nursing industry and the engineering industry. It would also be observed whether they can properly understand the WSH policies and regulations.The questionnaires that would be provided to them would help to get their answers on how they think that they face problems in the workplace. Whether they are good in communicating in English and, if not, do they believe that their lack of knowledge of English is in any way impacting the same.
In order to collect the data, questionnaires will be used and personal interviews would be conducted. In order to conduct the interview, 5managers from four different companies would be selected. The selection process will be non-probability, in a random manner. The interviews would be conducted as one-to-one interview and the questionnaires would be provided to the participants before the interviews. The interviews would be related to the answers on the questionnaires to arrive at conclusions for each individual. The questions would be strategically formed and it would be open-ended to know the efficiency and understanding capabilities of the employees in regard to the English language.
Twenty-five participants across different companies would be surveyed upon, five from each industry. In order to conduct the survey, simple random sampling of these twenty-five people would be used from five different companies. In simple random sampling, respondents will be chosen from different nationalities as well. This has to be made sure by selecting at least three representatives of every industry are from another country than the one they work in. The answers would be analysed accordingly to find any trend that suggests that WSH norms are compromised because of poor skills in English.
Every survey has a moral duty to be ethical and unbiased so that no violations in any form is done, even unintentionally. The responses of the participants must be classified and it must be ensured that no personal information is spread by any means (Yamao and Sekiguchi 2015). Some basic factors must be maintained during the study; such as making sure that the survey participants are not harmed in any way, and the results of the survey must be significantly greater than the inconveniences caused to the participants. They must also be given full information about the survey beforehand so that those who are not comfortable with such a survey can be able to not partake in the same.
Risks
There are virtually no risks to the survey, except for the obvious disparity in the language skills, which may adversely affect the WSH implementations.
For the survey minimum travel expenditure is required. Recording tools to record the interviews and stationary to print the questionnaires and any other written documents would suffice the project
References
Baker, W., 2016. Culture and language in intercultural communication, English as a lingua franca and English language teaching. Points of convergence and conflict, pp.70-92.
Knoch, U., McNamara, T., Woodward-Kron, R., Elder, C., Manias, E., Flynn, E. and Zhang, B., 2015. Towards improved language assessment of written health professional communication: The case of the Occupational English Test. Papers in Language Testing and Assessment, 4(2), pp.60-64.
McDonough, J. and McDonough, S., 2014. Research methods for English language teachers. Routledge.
Murray, N. and Hicks, M., 2016. An institutional approach to English language proficiency. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 40(2), pp.170-187.
Wright, W.E., 2015. Foundations for teaching English language learners: Research, theory, policy, and practice. Caslon Incorporated.
Yamao, S. and Sekiguchi, T., 2015. Employee commitment to corporate globalization: The role of English language proficiency and human resource practices. Journal of World Business, 50(1), pp.168-179.
Yao, Y. and van Ours, J.C., 2015. Language skills and labour market performance of immigrants in the Netherlands. Labour Economics, 34, pp.76-85.
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