Why UnDesked / The Multilingual Workforce

The Multilingual Workforce

The workers are already here.
The only barrier is language.

About one in five people on the manufacturing floor was born outside the U.S., and New Americans are the group filling the open jobs. They show up, and they stay, when they can understand the work. UnDesked puts every system in the language they read.

Your floor today
M
MaríaAssembly, Line 2
Spanish
H
HassanPackaging
Somali
T
ThidaQuality
Burmese
N
NguyenMaintenance
Vietnamese
About 1 in 5 was born outside the U.S., and that share is climbing.

The workforce that fills the floor is already here.

Manufacturing needs 3.8 million more workers by 2033, and about half will go unfilled at today's hiring rate.4 New Americans are the group closing that gap, and they stay longer than anyone when the work makes sense to them.

0%
of net U.S. workforce growth through 2030 comes from New Americans and their children1
0%
of manufacturing workers were born outside the U.S., about 1 in 52
0x
the retention edge: near 4% turnover with language support, versus a 28% average3

"Just teach them English" does not survive the math.

The U.S. Foreign Service Institute has measured this for seventy years. At the four hours a week a plant can realistically sponsor after a full shift, working English takes about three years.5 Most new hires turn over inside ninety days.

← ~90 days: when most new hires have already turned over
Translate the workNative language, day one
Day 1, understood
Full immersion, 40 hrs/wkNot realistic with a job
~6 mo
Classroom ESL, 25 hrs/wkNo time for another job
~1 yr
Workplace ESL, 10 hrs/wkRare in manufacturing
~1.5 yrs
After-shift ESL, 4 hrs/wkThe employer-sponsored reality
~3 yrs
01 yr2 yrs3 yrs
So translate the work, not the worker.

Every form. Every language.

Pick a form. Pick a language. Watch it render.

This is the same engine that runs under every workflow. The form, the labels, the buttons, all of it arrives in the language the worker reads.

Choose a form
Translate to

Showing 6 of 210+ supported languages.

Incident ReportLIVE
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Submit report
Your supervisor will be notified.
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High
Submit request
Maintenance will be notified.
Yes
No
Submit inspection
Logged for your shift and line.
Vacation
Sick
Personal
Submit request
Your manager will be notified.

The multilingual floor

One workforce, many first languages.

Author once and every worker reads it in their own language, automatically.

One barrier. Six failures at once.

The language gap does not stay in HR. The same misunderstanding shows up across every function of the plant, all at the same time.

Safety

Lockout/tagout, SDS lookups, PPE rules, and near-miss reporting only protect people who can read them. English-only safety training is a liability, not a program.

OSHA fines: $16K to $161K per violation6

Compliance

Policy acknowledgments and benefits sign-offs are only valid if the worker understood what they signed. Every audit finds the same gap.

A signature without comprehension is exposure

Quality

A misread spec does not just walk out the door. It becomes scrap, rework, and an OEM relationship under review.

Language errors are traceable defects

Maintenance

Workers who cannot read a manual or file a request let small problems compound in silence until a line goes down.

Issues surface late, or not at all

HR & Onboarding

Workers who feel invisible disengage and leave, taking weeks longer to reach full output and exiting in the first 90 days.

$10K to $40K per replacement

Production

When line instructions, issues, and onboarding all stall on language, shifts run short and shipments slip.

Capacity targets become impossible

Close the gap once, and all six get better together.

Not a translation tool

This is not a translation app. It is the whole platform, in every language.

The same platform that consolidates your point apps and digitizes your paper also speaks every worker's language. One system for safety, quality, maintenance, HR, and production, reaching everyone in the language they read, with no extra tool and no extra step.

See the AI Translation Engine

Customer story

A Fortune 500 plastics manufacturer consolidated 50 facilities and 8,500 deskless workers onto UnDesked.

0%fewer safety incidents in two years
0xmore near-miss reports, 400 to 4,000 a month
0%lower workers' comp costs, about $2.2M saved
0%higher workforce engagement
"Before UnDesked, every problem on the floor meant another login and another vendor, and no one place to see any of it. Now safety, quality, training, and communications all run on one platform. I manage the whole operation from a single screen, and my team works from one source of truth instead of six."

A Fortune 500 plastics manufacturer. Read the full story3

Two frontline workers reviewing a workflow on a tablet on the floor

The workers are here. Put the work in their language.

Bring the languages on your floor today. We will show you every system, in every one of them, on any device.

Sources

  1. National Association of Workforce Boards and U.S. Census projections; by 2030, about 97 percent of net U.S. workforce growth comes from New Americans and their children. thelanguagegap.com
  2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024; about 20.5 percent of manufacturing workers, roughly 1 in 5, were born outside the U.S., rising to 22 percent in nondurable goods. bls.gov
  3. Tent Partnership for Refugees and the Fiscal Policy Institute (about 4 percent) and The Resource Company and BLS (about 28 percent); New American turnover with language support runs near a fifth of the manufacturing average. thelanguagegap.com
  4. Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute, 2024; 3.8 million manufacturing workers will be needed by 2033, with roughly half at risk of going unfilled. themanufacturinginstitute.org
  5. U.S. Foreign Service Institute language difficulty research; reaching working proficiency in a new language takes roughly 1.5 to 3 years at the hours an employer can realistically sponsor. thelanguagegap.com
  6. OSHA, 2026 penalty rates; safety information must be conveyed in a language workers understand, with fines from $16,131 per serious violation up to $161,323 for willful violations. osha.gov
  7. UnDesked customer case study, Fortune 500 plastics manufacturer. undesked.com/case-study