Safety Training for Hispanic Landscape Workers: Challenges and Solutions

Landscape work is dangerous.  Workers not only handle dangerous machinery and chemicals, but are also exposed to heat and sun.  Tragically, landscape work can be deadly; there were 157 fatalities nationwide in 2010.  In Georgia, many Hispanics work in the landscape industry.   Their access to safety information can be limited because language and cultural barriers.  Since 2004, safety training programs targeting Hispanic landscape workers have been conducted by a bilingual team from the University of Georgia.  Over 2,500 workers have been trained to date.  Marketing the program to business owners and workers presented challenges. These challenges were overcome primarily by venue selection and timing of training.  Low literacy levels and related issues were identified as impediments to learning.  Visual materials and hands-on demonstrations were incorporated into the trainings to account for the literacy level of participants.  Pictorial and scenario-based questions were developed to assess the impact of the trainings on participant safety knowledge, before and after, the trainings. Results suggest that using pictures to evaluate participant learning is a moderately effective evaluation technique.  Challenges included pictures of unsafe practices that were potentially misinterpreted by participants.  However, scenario-based questions were more effective at measuring safety knowledge and showed that participants gained valuable information from the trainings in the areas of pedestrian hazards and identification of hazardous landscape features.  In addition, the scenario-based items allowed participants to engage in a conversation with the educator while thinking critically about safety on the jobsite.  This presentation will highlight what worked and what did not from both a data collection and safety training standpoint.