Bilingual people can play an important role as facilitators in multilingual workplaces by helping employers and employees to communicate. Because bilingual employees will be familiar to their co-workers, employees may be more comfortable receiving information and sharing health and safety concerns through them. 79. Bilingual facilitators may be able to: • talk to other employees, in a group or individually, about general OHS issues
• report on discussion between non-English speakers
• check for understanding where people with limited English are given information in simple written English
• be included in a network or chain of people used to pass on information
• make announcements over a communications system
• read out material that has been translated
• convey information between a health and safety committee and non-English speakers
• write brief notices, such as notice of a meeting.