High-risk work requires multimodal and multilingual communication and interaction

Global trends in working life have increased the amount of text-dominant work in many professions that previously involved less reading and writing than other professional fields. This shift is evident in manual work such as factory, construction and cleaning jobs.

Quality control and occupational safety standards, for example, require the precise documentation of work stages and processes. Nowadays, such documentation is not only language-based but also includes images, sound, and video, which can be key means of communicating messages in multilingual, high-risk contexts.

Such situations are common on construction sites, where noise and protection against it hinder verbal communication. 

The construction workers’ multilingual backgrounds can further complicate language-based communication. In addition, there are specific challenges related to communication and interaction between subcontractor chains.

Communication recognised as crucial in high-risk industries

In our ongoing research project, we examine texts and literacy practices at construction sites, with a particular focus on occupational safety and safety communication.

The construction industry is one of the highest risk industries in Finland. Safety regulations are strict, and significant efforts have been made to increase both safety and safety communication. The goal is for everyone to go home healthy and safe at the end of the workday.

At construction sites, various communication practices are used to communicate occupational safety measures to workers. 

Multilingualism is common on construction sites, with training materials often available in five different languages, and occasionally in as many as eight. 

Sometimes there’s no common language at all, but often one of the construction workers acts as an informal interpreter between management and their colleagues.

Digital applications used in communication on construction sites

However, top-down communication is often not enough. Both interaction between workers and communication with management are crucial for safety. Workers are obligated to intervene in hazardous situations and to report them to management.

Companies have, for example, developed digital applications for reporting safety issues. These applications enable employees to report issues seamlessly during their workday by simply taking photos. 

The application saves the information and location of the person reporting the issue, and in some cases no written description is needed at all. Quick and easy.

This type of practice can encourage people to make safety observations. It also demonstrates the opportunities afforded by a digital environment and visual-based approach.

Overall, digital tools are frequently used in the safety communication practices developed by construction companies. Other applications include electronic training materials, risk assessment and work planning forms, Teams meetings for staff, infographics in breakrooms, and WhatsApp groups.

Oral communication essential in fast-paced situations

However, oral communication and analogue methods are often more effective at construction sites. When issues need to be resolved quickly, it is most sensible to inform a co-worker verbally about noisy work that about to commence or to phone the site manager about high-risk situations that demand their attention.

As one employee put it in such a situation: “Well, I’m certainly not going to start writing an email about it!”

A workplace should feature a culture that supports interaction, in which employees know each other and look out for one another. In such a workplace, the threshold to point out a safety risk is lower than it would be with complete strangers.

When safety is supported over the long term within a familiar work community, it positively contributes to the development of a safety culture. However, time pressure and constantly changing, unfamiliar co-workers can make communication difficult, which in turn, can compromise safety at work.

In the construction industry, the subcontractor structure poses a further challenge to safety communication.

Within such a structure, how can interaction and communication that promote safety can be supported? It is this question our research seeks to address. Our goal is that, in the future, there will be more information available that will improve safety communication and interaction in this challenging industry.

The author, Sari Sulkunen, works as professor of Finnish at the University of Jyväskylä. She studies multiliteracy, that is, diverse literacy skills, as well as their learning and teaching.  She leads a research project that examines communication at construction sites: Professional multiliteracies in increasing safety at construction work (MonTTU).