A cross-cultural program for environmental management

For those who have responsibility for safety programs in health facilities the primary objective is to effectively orient, train and retrain environmental service and housekeeping personnel, regardless of their individual background, so that each employee has the knowledge, skills and work habits to safely and effectively meet performance expectations. With an increasingly diverse multicultural workforce, however, we need to reexamine many of our assumptions of what constitutes adequate safety training for all employees. This paper examines some of the basic issues that arise when addressing a multicultural workforce. Two questions are at the heart of the discussion: (1) how do you effectively communicate with a multicultural base group, and (2) how do you know if your communication has been effective to ensure the health and safety of your employees?