Bridging the gap between “illiterate” shop floor employees and that of the “illiterates”

There exists a gap between the understanding of health and safety at work among the unskilled illiterate shop floor employees and that of the illiterates. The results obtained from the study I jointly carried out with my wife that focused on the influence of literacy on the appreciation of simple health and safety concepts among artisans confirmed this observation.    But how can we bridge this gap as occupational health and safety professionals?   The solution to this is changing on how we occupational health and safety professionals present occupational health and safety issues to this group of people. Let me briefly, at this juncture share my experience with you.

Sometimes ago, I was asked to teach a group of health assistant trainees   basic occupational health as related to health services.  Besides observing their body language, I also started evaluating the educational background of my audience through responses to basic questions I asked them in English language. I discovered that majority of them did not understand me until I changed to a local language. For example, indicating to them that hazard in Yoruba means "EWU", while  accident is "JAMBA' and disease is "ARUN" and illness is "AISAN". I further explained the relationship between these terms in Yoruba. Just come and see the enthusiasm among the students. They wanted to know more. At the end of my presentation, I set a test for them. Believe me or not the least mark scored was 52% while the highest in the group scored 96%. I also had the same challenge while working in a multinational company where I was asked to make a presentation on health and safety hazards to women working in the company’s pineapple farm as result of high rate of hand injuries among them,  assumed to be caused by them drinking the locally brewed gin ( apateshi or ogogoro).  I commenced my presentation;  using the popular language in the community -Pidgin English to sing one of the popular highlife music that highlighted the health, safety and moral  implications of excessive  consumption of  the locally brewed gin. Most of the women believed my words and were happy! I later learnt that most of them stopped drinking the local gin before and during work and there was a reduction in the rate of hand injuries in the farm.

What am I driving home?  We occupational health and safety professionals   should come down  to the level of our audience when making presentation. And,  if possible we should  explain some of the terms and words in  local language the people understand and  support this by referring to  local news of industrial accidents and diseases  they might  have  heard from electronic media. Also, we should stressed in our presentation that not all accidents and diseases are caused by witches and wizards but through ignorance and tendency to cut corners that  in most cases is  influenced by poverty.  This also gives an opportunity to highlight that no amount of money can replace lost limbs or sight.  They will not agree less with you. In some organisation unskilled-illiterate workers see HSE personnel as policemen. But this friendly approach will change their attitude, and in no time this will result in a sustainable positive safety culture in such an organisation.