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Social and cultural factors in occupational prevention

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Social and cultural factors in occupational prevention

In an evacuation, people do not behave like molecules. The parameters that you can enter in your simulation do not turn the figures on the screen into people. People help each other, which can speed up an evacuation by up to 30%, but sometimes they panic, with potentially disastrous consequences. Are the people present younger or older, do they speak the same language and does that particular instruction mean the same thing in all cultures?

At one of our customers, for example, the mother tongue of the majority of the employees is not Dutch. What about a quick switch to English? No, that is not an option either, nor is French or German.

These new employees also receive training to allow them to carry out their tasks in the safest possible conditions, so it sometimes becomes a bit of hand-to-hand work with a lot of visual support. Or you call in colleagues who speak that specific foreign language and can interpret.

Of course, it is a question of remaining alert. A word can have a totally different connotation in different languages and cultures. How fast is "swift"? And "evacuate"? Is it running quickly by yourself or following the procedures? How much autonomy does the employee have in a given situation? Is docility rather the reflex or proactive action?

There is always the question: how does the other person interpret my words or instructions?

In this company, you make the tour a little more often and check whether the worker, for example, has interpreted the instructions for operating the machines as you explained them. You watch him/her drive the forklift truck and it is immediately clear whether he/she has understood the importance of the safety measures he has been taught. And you keep doing that, so that the attention to maintaining the acquired knowledge doesn't fade away. It goes without saying that some employees don't always like to see you coming...

Another customer is a Chinese company with a fairly new branch in Limburg. Here it goes a little further than the language barrier, which is already more extreme.

Some of the employees are monolingual Chinese. This is dealt with by having an interpreter in house who also knows the company, but even there it is sometimes necessary to find solutions for translating the finer points.

You also experience that the hierarchy is different, which means that you have to undertake a very patient quest yourself, for example, before you can get your hands on the key to a different key cabinet.

When you manage to sit down at the table in such a company and get things moving, the satisfaction is all the greater. It is also wonderful to be able to work with people every day and to respond to their specific questions.

Seekurico Ltd

Rode Kruisstraat 49
3540 Herk-de-Stad (B)

info@seekurico.be
Phone +32 (0)474 37 94 63

VAT BE 0683.484.566

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