Increase Margins by Effectively Communicating with your Cross-Cultural Workforce

Zerah Services Releases the Construction Industrys First Multi-Lingual Safety Training Platform

Englewood, CO- Soaring workers compensation premiums continue to make life difficult in an extremely competitive construction industry. For many companies this issue is directly related to the challenge of effectively communicating with a growing non-English speaking workforce. The lucky few that have successfully bridged this communication gap have gained a competitive advantage by improving safety and thus achieving lower insurance premiums. This issue raises an imposing question for many companies: will the inability to train and field a safety conscious cross-cultural workforce, put your business in jeopardy?

Chris Krueger, President of the construction safety solutions firm Zerah Services, feels that companies unwilling to address these cross-cultural issues will suffer from more than lofty insurance rates. Safety performance has become a factor for obtaining new business now that experience modifiers of 1.0 or less are required when bidding for many jobs," states Krueger. As the non-English speaking workforce (especially Latino) continues to grow, unprepared businesses will find that reaching these bidding requirements will become increasingly difficult."    

Zerah Services has started to help many companies tackle the safety language barrier by providing a revolutionary safety-training tool known as the Zerah Integrated Performance Platform (ZIPP). According to Rick Lawrence, President of Colorado based Lawrence Construction Inc., The ZIPP Software has enabled us to more effectively communicate with our Spanish speaking workforce...the savings in time and money has been invaluable."

ZIPP is tailored to deliver each clients training, policies, and standard procedures through a multi-lingual and user-friendly CD-ROM interface. Krueger, a 30-year veteran of the construction industry explains that, The majority of Spanish speaking workers are unable to comprehend written training documents that have been translated from English. This problem is eliminated by ZIPPs ability to deliver courses with language selectable audio."

In addition to creating a safer work environment, successful cross-cultural training solutions have had a positive effect on employee loyalty. Businesses utilize ZIPP to provide new employees with customized orientations that are presented by upper management," explains Krueger. This has helped our clients to reduce turnover because workers see that management is committed to creating a safe and professional environment."

For further information on how to implement a successful cross-cultural training strategy please contact Zerah Services at www.zerah.com or call 1-303-721-0880.