TL;DR
National Safety Month is a good time to ask: can everyone in your organization actually understand the safety information you’re putting in front of them? If the answer is ‘not sure,’ that’s the gap LSA fills. We make language access easy to build into whatever you’re already doing — whether that’s a training session, a patient discharge, a 9-1-1 call, or a factory floor walkthrough.
Professional interpreters are available on demand by phone, video, or onsite, and AI-powered tools can scale translated content across your entire organization without starting from scratch.
How Language Barriers Increase Workplace Risk — and What Organizations Can Do to Improve Safety, Compliance, and Outcomes
One in four workplace accidents in the U.S. involves a language barrier. In hospitals, patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) are 40% more likely to be physically harmed by a medical error. And when someone calls 9-1-1 and doesn’t speak English, emergency dispatch takes a third longer to arrive.
These aren’t edge cases. Roughly 26 million people in the U.S. speak English less than “very well.” When those workers and community members can’t fully understand safety training, medical directions, or emergency procedures, the consequences are both measurable and preventable.
June is National Safety Month, and language access is one of the biggest blind spots in workplace safety. Most organizations have safety protocols, training programs, and compliance checklists. Far fewer have tested whether any of it works for employees and community members who don’t speak English fluently.
Language Services Associates (LSA) has been providing language access in high-risk environments for more than 35 years. Our experience has taught us that where language is a barrier, safety is compromised.
Below, we break down where language barriers create the most danger, what the research says about the cost of getting it wrong, and what organizations in healthcare, manufacturing, public safety, and other high-risk industries can do about it.
Where Communication Gaps Create Safety Risks
The risks show up differently depending on the industry, but the pattern is the same: when people can’t fully understand critical information, bad things happen.
In healthcare, a patient who doesn’t understand discharge instructions gets readmitted. In manufacturing, a worker who can’t read a safety manual gets hurt. In a contact center, a caller who can’t communicate their emergency waits longer for help. In government agencies and transportation systems, communities that don’t receive multilingual alerts during severe weather or public health emergencies are left exposed.
Here’s what that looks like on the ground in different sectors.
Healthcare: Communication Directly Impacts Outcomes
The stakes in healthcare are especially high. Children of LEP parents who are hospitalized face nearly double the risk of medical errors. Much of that risk comes down to whether or not interpretation services are available, and to who’s doing the interpreting.
In a study from the Annals of Emergency Medicine, among errors made by ad hoc interpreters — family members, bilingual staff pulled from other duties — 22% had potential clinical consequences.
Hospitals that invest in professional interpreters see measurable returns. When professional interpreters were used at both admission and discharge, average stays dropped from more than five days down to an average of two and a half days, and readmission rates fell from 24.3% to 14.9%.
For healthcare organizations, the right language access setup means Over the Phone Interpretation for urgent situations, Video Remote Interpretation when visual communication matters (like ER visits or bedside care), and Onsite interpretation for complex conversations. Translated discharge instructions and consent forms close the gap on written materials. And with direct EHR integrations like Epic and AthenaHealth, providers can connect to an interpreter without leaving their clinical workflow.
Manufacturing & Industrial Environments
Manufacturing runs on precise communication, and much of the workforce doesn’t speak English as a first language.
That OSHA estimate of 1 in 4 accidents involving a language barrier? It makes more sense when you look at who’s actually doing the work.
Hispanic and Latino workers — who frequently encounter language barriers in high-hazard industries — have the highest workplace fatality rate of any demographic group at 4.3 per 100,000 full-time workers. In construction, more than 30% of the workforce is Hispanic. When those workers can’t read English-only safety manuals or communicate hazards to supervisors, the danger adds up fast.
OSHA requires employers to provide safety training in a language employees can understand, and non-compliance carries real penalties: up to $16,550 per serious violation and $165,514 for willful or repeated violations as of January 2025.
This is where professional translation of safety manuals, SOPs, and signage becomes a safety investment rather than an expense. Onsite interpreters during training sessions and safety drills make sure workers actually understand procedures before they enter high-risk environments. Video Remote Interpretation gives teams quick access to language support during incidents or daily operations, and AI Video Dubbing can convert training videos into multiple languages at scale across locations and shifts.
Public Safety & Government Communication
The 9-1-1 delays mentioned above get worse for more serious calls. A CDC-cited study found that language barriers increased advanced life support dispatch times by 43%, and those calls were also more likely to receive an incorrect level of medical aid.
Emergency dispatch is just one piece of the picture. Government agencies and public-facing organizations also handle multilingual communication during severe weather, public health situations, transportation disruptions, and community emergencies.
When seconds matter, agencies need on-demand Over the Phone Interpretation for rapid multilingual 9-1-1 and emergency communication, Video Remote Interpretation for public services where visual communication is needed (including American Sign Language), and Onsite Interpretation for community outreach and disaster response. AI-enabled language solutions add scalable support during large-scale events when demand spikes faster than human interpreters can fill.
Contact Centers & Operational Safety
In contact centers supporting regulated industries, the safety risk isn’t a fall or a chemical burn — it’s a miscommunication that leads to the wrong medication dosage or a utility emergency that isn’t properly escalated.
86% of contact centers report serving callers who aren’t native speakers of their primary service language. When those contact centers support healthcare hotlines, utility emergencies, insurance claims, or transportation services, a miscommunication isn’t just frustrating — it’s dangerous. A caller describing chest pain, a gas leak, or a medication reaction needs to be understood accurately the first time.
Without reliable language support, those calls take longer, get escalated more often, and are more likely to require repeat contacts — adding pressure to agents and slowing response times across the board.
LSA’s approach pairs integrated interpretation directly within contact center platforms with AI language tools for high-volume, lower-risk interactions. Agents can add an interpreter to a call in seconds, and human interpreters handle the sensitive conversations where nuance matters most.
Supporting Compliance & Documentation
Language access isn’t optional for most of the industries discussed here — it’s legally required.
The Affordable Care Act, Title VI, OSHA’s training standards, and the ADA all carry language access requirements — and non-compliance means fines, lost federal funding, or litigation. Beyond the legal exposure, organizations that can’t document consistent multilingual communication practices are vulnerable during audits and investigations.
Professional translation and interpretation services help organizations maintain documentation consistency, support audit readiness, and prove equitable communication practices. For healthcare payers, LSA SmartCheck automates real-time interpretation eligibility and coverage verification, cutting manual effort and keeping service delivery compliant.
Building Safer Communication Strategies
The organizations getting this right aren’t treating language access as a side project.
LSA’s model is built for this: human interpreters for accuracy and nuance, AI-powered tools for speed and scale, and direct integrations that plug into existing workflows.
National Safety Month is a good time to ask: can everyone in your organization actually understand the safety information you’re putting in front of them? If the answer is ‘not sure,’ that’s the gap LSA fills. We make language access easy to build into whatever you’re already doing — whether that’s a training session, a patient discharge, a 9-1-1 call, or a factory floor walkthrough. Professional interpreters are available on demand by phone, video, or onsite, and AI-powered tools can scale translated content across your entire organization without starting from scratch.
Ready to close communication gaps?
LSA helps organizations build language access into their safety infrastructure, not bolt it on as an afterthought.
- Get in touch to find out what that looks like for your team.
