Work instructions in multiple languages

Why multiple languages?

Danish law on work-environment instruction does not depend on the employee speaking Danish. The requirement is that instruction be given in a form the employee understands. In construction and in the trades it is normal to work side by side with people whose best language is Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian, or English. Today this is often handled by pointing, showing, and hoping the message lands. It works in a quiet week. It does not hold up when something goes wrong.

Work instructions already live in APV in Danish, with digital sign-off. The next step is for the same instruction to be presented in the language the employee has chosen, with the same content and the same signature trail.

What it will look like

When you create an instruction, you still write it once — in Danish. From there you can add translations, either as your own manual translations or as suggestions you review and approve before they go live. The original is the normative version: if there is any doubt about meaning, the Danish text is the reference. The translations are for the people doing the work.

The employee chooses their language the first time they open APV on their phone. From then on they automatically see instructions in that language when it is available, and the Danish text is shown alongside so they can compare if they are unsure. The sign-off stores the exact version the employee saw — both language and text version — so the documentation is unambiguous even if the text changes later.

For the owner

You do not have to run a translation service on the side. Everything happens in the same flow you already use to create instructions. You can see which languages are missing for a given instruction and prioritize the ones that match your workforce. Chemical safety data sheets can be attached in multiple language versions, where the supplier has them.

Which languages matter most in your company? Is there an instruction that has cost you time or an incident because it only existed in Danish? Get in touch.