As part of its commitment to social value, Dals works closely with clients to provide language solutions aligned with their carbon reduction goals.
One such client, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM), wanted to continue to best serve its limited English speaking end users with the help of high-quality interpreting, whilst also capping its impact on the environment.
Dals guided SLaM to achieve this through implementing remote services, including telephone interpreting and video remote interpreting, across the organisation.
About South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust:
SLaM aims to be an effective, sustainable organisation that succeeds in supporting the public whilst having limited harm on the environment. Serving south London’s wide-ranging health needs without producing harmful carbon emissions is no easy feat, but it is one that SLaM sees in its near future.
SLaM shares the wider NHS’s Net Zero target of 2045. The trust’s commitment to achieving zero net emissions over the next two decades is demonstrated in its Green Plan, which is backed by the trust’s board and incorporated into all its operations.
By carefully choosing supply partners whose technology is both future-thinking and environmentally friendly, SLaM makes positive steps towards its green goals.
As SLaM’s language service provider, Dals wanted to support the trust’s carbon reduction aims without compromising on healthcare quality.
A key factor was helping SLaM fully implement remote language services, namely telephone interpreting and video remote interpreting, across its departments.
Utilising remote interpreting services across SLaM led to greener operations whilst also increasing efficiency for its staff and ultimately improving end users’ experience.
Before widespread implementation of remote interpreting, staff members would opt to book a face to face interpreter for meeting with a limited English speaker. Whilst this option was easy to book on Dals’s secure platform and resulted in great service, its flexibility was limited.
Staff members would have to know in advance when they would need an interpreter. This was to accommodate the time it takes to source one in the required language and for them to then travel to the treatment site. In contrast, remote interpreting is available on demand, meaning an interpreter can be instantly and easily accessed whenever and wherever one is needed, 24/7. This elimination of an interpreter needing to commute is also more cost-effective, as travel expenses do not need to be covered.
Favouring remote language services over face to face interpreting has hugely supported SLaM’s carbon reduction goals.
The carbon emissions resulting from a telephone interpreting call or a video remote interpreting call are markedly lower than a face to face interpreting booking due to the linguist not having to commute. Increasingly, remote interpreting bookings are SLaM staff’s go-to option:
In addition, if a rare language is required, an interpreter may need to be sourced from many miles away, due to the smaller availability of expert linguists covering this language. This can further add to the carbon emitted by the journey. When remote interpreting services are used, however, the carbon emissions of the call are the same no matter the language.
Even in the cases when a face to face interpreter is still required, the environmental impact has been reduced for SLaM, due to Dals’s language technology innovation such as the linguist locator tool.
The tool, in addition to wide adoption of remote services, has significantly lowered the average distance a linguist travels to a face-to-face interpreting appointment, and lowered the resulting carbon emitted.
Read more about ESG efforts at Dals to see how we’re helping clients reach their carbon reduction goals.
If you would like to know more about our language services, please get in contact and our team will soon be in touch.
