Foreign-worker safety training requirement opens a case for multilingual records

Safety training is shifting from “delivered” to “understood”

The Wanju Foreign Resident Support Center (완주외국인지원센터) recently trained 30 foreign workers from nine countries at the Iksan Safety Experience Education Center (익산안전체험교육장). In conditions designed to resemble a real workplace, participants experienced fall risks involving system scaffolding and aerial work platforms, accident risks involving presses and forklifts, and the correct use of personal protective equipment.

Participants said the risks felt more real than they did through explanation alone, and that they would carry out more checks before and after work. It is not yet known whether the training reduced actual accidents, but it shows a workplace need that translation of written material alone does not meet.

The training population is substantial. According to the Korea Workers’ Compensation & Welfare Service (근로복지공단), Korea had 1.109 million foreign workers in employment in May 2025, while approved occupational injury cases rose from 7,778 in 2020 to 10,215 in 2025. This cannot be read as an increase in accidents alone, because growth in the foreign workforce and changes in access to industrial accident insurance may also be reflected. Still, it is a scale that a single region’s interpretation service would struggle to handle.

The Korean government distributes translated occupational safety and health materials in 17 languages. In 2024, it provided videos on frequent accidents such as welding fires and confined-space suffocation in the languages of the 16 countries covered by the Employment Permit System (고용허가제), Korea’s work-permit system for foreign workers. This does not mean every teaching material is available in all 16 languages.

The rules have also moved. A bill passed the National Assembly on June 18, 2026 created a new requirement for employers to have foreign workers they hire complete basic occupational safety and health training. The Ministry of Employment and Labor (고용노동부), Korea’s labor ministry, said it would take effect six months after promulgation. The window to test a product runs from the National Assembly vote to implementation, but the exact promulgation and effective dates should be checked before signing contracts.

A way to reduce what small factories repeat every time

Consider a metal-processing factory with 28 employees, including 12 workers from Nepal, Myanmar, and Cambodia. When hiring, the owner checks identity documents and training certificates. A team leader explains press and forklift risks. An administrative employee stores signed paper forms in files.

The problem is that materials for each language are stored in different places, and the same worker may have to write their name and affiliation again across multiple documents. When the day’s work changes in the morning, the team leader may explain new risks with a phone translation function and gestures. It is easy to treat a nod as proof that the worker understood.

Even when government videos exist, it can be difficult to find material that matches the specific machine and work sequence assigned that day. A certificate may show attendance at basic training, but it does not prove that a worker understands how to isolate power while cleaning a press.

Once the new requirement takes effect, owners will at minimum need to check more often who has completed which training. The law cannot be assumed to require a particular digital service or an understanding test. But as hiring grows, so will demand for a single place to find language, training date, task, and certificate information.

A service built for this need would first let the worker select a language, then show three photos of today’s task with short audio explanations. The worker answers a picture-based question such as, “In which situation should the machine be stopped?” If the answer is wrong, the team leader demonstrates again and records the result.

After training, the owner can see the date, task name, language used, person who explained it, and understanding-check result on one screen. If the next day’s task changes to forklift loading and unloading, the employer can add a short briefing for that task rather than collect the existing certificate again.

Some work must still remain in human hands. A service cannot install machine guards, create places to attach safety harnesses, or take responsibility for stopping dangerous work. Translation and records should support an employer’s safety measures, not become a signature tool for shifting blame to workers after an accident.

Elsewhere, training is already connected to site access

Germany’s doinstruct provides site- and task-specific training in more than 35 languages for construction workers and visitors. It lets people begin training on a mobile phone without installing an app or creating an email account, and charges workplaces based on user numbers and contract duration.

German construction company Echterhoff has run more than 40 mobile training courses for 670 workers since 2024. The claim that serious site accidents fell by 42% after adoption comes from the service company’s own announcement and needs independent verification. Still, its approach of connecting translated training with site-specific assignment and records is useful to examine.

US-based SkillSignal sells construction companies a service that manages onboarding, safety videos, certificate expiry dates, and training records in one place. Ruttura & Sons, a concrete contractor in the New York area, introduced 14-language functionality across multiple sites with about 250 employees.

The service company said the rollout reached all sites in about two weeks, about half of employees used it in their own language, and site supervisors saved about one hour of paperwork per day. This is also a supplier customer case, but the important point is that training completion can be checked immediately alongside certificates and eligibility to enter a site.

Singapore’s Settling-In Programme for migrant workers is a one-day course for new migrant workers in manufacturing, construction, and marine shipyard work before they receive a work permit. It teaches safety, industrial accident compensation, labor rights, and local life in workers’ languages, including Bengali, Burmese, Tamil, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Employers pay about KRW 79,000 per worker, and completion is connected to the work-permit process. From August 2025, some workers returning to Singapore within two years after work-permit cancellation have been exempted from retraining, separating people who need initial training from those who do not need repeated training.

Four things to build now

1. A picture guide before work

• What it does: A service that takes site photos and today’s task, then creates a picture guide and audio explanation in the worker’s language.
• Who uses it: A team leader at a 30-person metal-processing factory that has newly hired workers from Nepal and Cambodia but has no dedicated safety manager.
• Why now: Even with a basic-training requirement, risks from machines and tasks that change every day must be explained again at the workplace.
• First screen: Three buttons: “Select today’s task,” “Select worker language,” and “Take site photo.”

2. A training log with understanding checks

• What it does: A service that records picture-question answers and practical demonstration results after multilingual video training, then gathers each worker’s certificates and retraining dates.
• Who uses it: An administrative employee at a small window and exterior-installation contractor whose foreign day workers move between multiple sites.
• Why now: Attendance signatures alone make it hard to know whether workers understood, while the new requirement will increase the work of finding training histories.
• First screen: Show “People who need training today,” “Certificates nearing expiry,” and “Items to explain again” first.

3. A voice reporting channel for hazards

• What it does: Workers speak in their own language or take a photo. The service sends a translated hazard report to a manager and returns the handling status.
• Who uses it: Workers from Myanmar and Bangladesh who find it difficult to describe hazards in Korean, and shift supervisors at food factories who manage them.
• Why now: More training alone does not fix a broken guard or blocked emergency exit. Workers also need a way to ask for help.
• First screen: Large buttons in the worker’s language: “Request work stoppage,” “Report with photo,” and “Person who can help.”

4. Booking links for local hands-on training

• What it does: A workplace enters worker languages and tasks, finds nearby hands-on training schedules, interpretation availability, and required items, then books a group session.
• Who uses it: A general-affairs employee at a manufacturer in the Wanju and Iksan area that uses forklifts and aerial work platforms but has no in-house experience facility.
• Why now: Even as regional hands-on sessions such as Wanju’s 30-person training increase, workplaces may struggle to find schedules, languages, and remaining seats in one place.
• First screen: After selecting “Region,” “Type of work,” “Required language,” and “Number of participants,” show only available training.

Why this matters where you are

Korea’s upcoming training requirement, government-provided multilingual materials, and Employment Permit System are Korean conditions, not universal ones. In your own market, check whether safety training is tied to hiring, work permits, site access, or certificate records, and whether materials exist in the languages workers actually use. If the record is spread across translation, paper signatures, and certificates, a small task-specific record tool may be worth testing.

One thing to check today

Call the person responsible for administration at one factory employing five or more foreign workers and ask them to describe the full training process for one recent hire, from start to finish. If searching for materials, interpretation, signatures, and certificate storage are split across three or more places; processing one person takes more than 30 minutes; and the person says they would try a one-screen prototype, it may be worth starting with a small training log.