It’s great for business to have team members speaking different foreign languages in the workplace.
It instantaneously turbo boosts your employer branding. You shouldn’t underestimate its potency. Languages are a valuable asset in an employment market that’s embattled by gaping skills shortages.
Employer branding isn’t about the products you sell or the services you offer. It’s about how you’re perceived as an employer. So it’s a powerful thing.
Let’s take a closer look at what foreign languages in the workplace bring to the table –
- Languages Help Failproof Your Employer Branding – Multiple foreign languages in the workplace send out a clear message that you’re a fair, open-minded, progressive, unbiased equal opportunities employer.
- Languages Enhance Businesses – Team members from a variety of different backgrounds and with different cultural influences enrich your business and help propel it forwards.
- Languages Increase Efficiency – Having team members communicating in different languages encourages a spirit of collaboration that promotes optimum output.
- Languages Look Forwards and Outwards – Foreign languages in the workplace prevent you looking out of touch. The more diverse your business is, the more it reflects the society your key stakeholders – employees, clients/customers, investors, suppliers – live and work in.
- Languages Underpin Diversity and Inclusion – Having employees speaking in different languages supports your diversity and inclusion strategies. You’re less likely to experience litigation on the grounds of discrimination if you’re known as an equitable business where foreign languages in the workplace are valued.
Landor & Fitch’s Ian Welch laid bare the potential damage caused by a lack of foreign languages in the workplace.
He told HR News –
“…it could also damage the company’s brand as a good place to work, with prospective non-native workers put off by the lack of inclusive policies – in turn risking the loss of brilliant talent and a diverse range of thinking on their team.
Alongside this, potential foreign business partners could begin to look elsewhere, while overseas opportunities could be missed if there’s not a culture in place open to other languages”.
At La Academia, Manchester’s most popular and trusted language school, we’ve helped businesses with languages for years.
Get in touch if you’re looking for language lessons for your team members. This could be to introduce foreign languages in the workplace. Or to enhance communications between team members who speak different languages.
Sources
Breaking language barriers for a better employee experience, Andrew Welch, HR News
http://hrnews.co.uk/breaking-language-barriers-for-a-better-employee-experience/