In industrial settings, it is all too common to find bilingual employees having to spend hours translating instead of performing their primary job or workers hesitating to speak up due to language barriers.
This delay in communication can not only halt production lines, it can cause safety concerns to go unreported. Language barriers also take a financial toll, hidden labor costs are likely costing your business $500,000 or more annually1.
Employees from different backgrounds, cultures and with varied language skills bring unique benefits to any organization, but often, not enough is being done to better empower them when there are language barriers.
In a recent survey by Relay of over 200 manufacturing and warehousing professionals, 45% believe their plant or site is negatively impacted by language barriers. Yet, these costs rarely appear explicitly in financial reports.
This blog highlights how language barriers are creating unseen challenges and what you can do to mitigate these impacts, based on findings in our 2024 survey. Any data not from our proprietary study will be externally referenced.
The Productivity Problem: A Silent Saboteur
When language barriers infiltrate industrial settings, they quietly siphon efficiency and create bottlenecks that affect every level of the organization.
The Impact on Bilingual Workers
Bilingual employees often serve as unofficial translators, spending an average of 4 hours per week translating for colleagues. This costs businesses an average of $7,500 annually per bilingual worker2 in lost productivity. With 77% of facilities relying on bilingual employees whose primary job does not include translating, it’s no surprise these workers often feel overburdened, leading to frustration and burnout.
The Impact on Non-Native English Speakers
Employees needing translation support lose valuable work time. On average, this costs $1,800 annually per ESL (English as a Second Language) worker3. While 37% of ESL workers report needing translation to perform tasks, others may gravitate toward low-communication roles, limiting their growth potential.
Company-Wide Productivity Loss
Language barriers don’t just impact individuals. 86% of survey respondents believe their workplace loses productivity due to language barriers, with 42% estimating losses exceed 5%. For large-scale operations, this inefficiency can cost businesses millions annually.
Safety at Stake: When Language Barriers Turn Dangerous
In industrial settings, where clear communication can be life-saving, language barriers present serious risks.
The Link Between Language Barriers and Injuries
Workplace injuries cost the U.S. economy $167 billion annually, with OSHA estimating that language barriers contribute to 25% of incidents. Misunderstood safety protocols, missed hazard warnings, and difficulties reporting issues all heighten risks.
Survey Spotlight on Safety:
- 1. 85% report that improving employee safety is important at their facility.
- 2. 64% of respondents believe language barriers negatively impact employee safety.
- 3. 50% agree that language barriers make their work environment inherently less safe.
Real-life scenarios further illustrate these dangers, such as evacuation instructions only being read in English – leading to added confusion during an emergency. Addressing language barriers isn’t just good practice; it’s essential for creating safer workplaces.
The Ripple Effect on Retention and Engagement
Retention and engagement are vital to fostering a thriving workplace, yet language barriers often create invisible hurdles that weaken both.
The Cost of Turnover
Language barriers contribute to high turnover, which costs companies 50-75% of an employee’s annual salary per replacement. Among surveyed workers, 42% believe language barriers contribute to higher turnover rates in their workplace.
Limited Career Advancement Opportunities
Language challenges also create inequities in promotions. 48% of respondents agreed that language barriers reduce promotion opportunities for affected workers, creating a glass ceiling that fuels dissatisfaction.
The Impact on Employee Morale
Communication fosters a sense of belonging and engagement, with research showing that 83% of respondents believe employees are more engaged at work if they can communicate with one another.
Additionally, 65% of workers would feel more satisfied if language barriers were removed, and 73% believe their company should invest in solutions to reduce them. Eliminating these barriers boosts morale and transforms workplace culture.
Communication Gaps Create Training Setbacks
Language barriers slow onboarding, delay training, and increase errors. Survey results confirm this challenge, with 84% of respondents reporting that improving employee training is important at their facility and 63% of respondents indicating that language barriers hinder employee training efforts.
The Tech Advantage: Real-Time Translation Solutions
Relying on bilingual employees isn’t sustainable. While apps can help, they often interrupt workflows and pose compliance risks when personal devices are involved.
With support for over 30 languages, Relay’s TeamTranslate™ empowers teams to transcend language barriers without breaking up their workflow. Teams can communicate effectively, collaborate seamlessly, and focus on the task at hand, all while breaking down language barriers. Its seamless, hands-free translation eliminates the need to pause work, fumble with phones, or rely on potentially unreliable and distracting personal devices.
Investing in solutions like TeamTranslate to reduce language barriers isn’t just about cutting costs. It’s about creating a safer, more inclusive, and more efficient workplace. For companies ready to tackle this challenge, the rewards are substantial: stronger teams, higher employee satisfaction, and a healthier bottom line.
A Cost Worth Addressing
Language barriers may seem like a minor operational challenge, but their hidden costs are anything but small. From lost productivity and increased safety risks to high turnover and stalled training efforts, the impact is significant.
Every instance where a team is forced to halt their work to clarify ambiguous instructions, decipher unclear messages, or translate information between languages, has a ripple effect that impacts the entire operation.
These seemingly minor interruptions accumulate and contribute to substantial losses in productivity, efficiency, and ultimately, profitability, so it’s no wonder that 82% of manufacturing and warehousing professionals want their site to invest in more translation solution.
Footnotes
- 1. To get this $500,000 average, we added the average annual labor cost of the time bilingual employees are pulled away from their primary responsibilities to translate ($7,500) to the average annual labor cost for the time non-English speaking employees stop doing their primary responsibilities to receive translated ($1,800), then multiply this number by the reported average number of bilingual and ESL employees (34 and 130 respectively) per site. ↩︎
2. To calculate $7500, we multiplied the average reported bilingual worker’s annual salary by the average reported percent of working hours these bilingual workers are being pulled away from their primary job to help translate. ↩︎
3. To calculate $1800, we multiplied the average annual earnings of a manufacturing worker by the average reported percent of working hours that these ESL workers are pulled away from their primary job to receive translation from a coworker. ↩︎
