An organization is only as good as its talent. As companies become more global they find themselves having to manage a distributed workforce across many continents and time zones, while speaking many languages. Whether gender, age or race based, a workforce’s diversity contributes to a variety of insights and advantages to general corporate culture. Most leaders would agree in principal that it’s imperative to create an environment where employees are able to play to their strengths, while supporting their areas of challenge to achieve mutually beneficial goals. One immediate way to leverage the diversity of a global workforce is through selecting and adopting a common business language.
Many companies have publicly expressed their choices; The Le Tour de France’s official language is English, Rakuten in Japan publicly committed to a new strategic initiative, "Englishnization", or the process of using English to break down linguistic and cultural boundaries. Getting your team to learn how to communicate and collaborate in business English might be a golden opportunity. The question isn’t so much about if this is a good idea, but rather how do you do it when your workforce is spread around the world, and when talented native trainers are so rare in developing countries.
The truth is, there aren’t many tools available that fit the bill. However, Pearson English Business Solutions specializes in offering business solutions focused on enabling talent to communicate, collaborate and operate in English. Implementing learning strategies for large workforces is no easy feat. Simultaneously, the technology, the product, and services have to be aligned throughout the talent management lifecycle. This correlates with an employee’s pre-hire screenings, a detailed onboarding curriculum, and career development learning packages that are unique to each person.
The personalized curriculum, determined by the platform, depends on if you are using a self-study platform where you select your areas of interest and pass a placement test based on your personalized learning path, or if you work with a private coach who can tailor the learning experience to your specific needs and speed of development. Companies already using this approach include HSBC and Volvo in Brazil.
A video demonstrating this can also be found in our Happy Thursday campaign.
Only about seven percent of non-native English speakers in companies think that they can communicate well at work. By training employees to improve their business English skills, a company becomes a more attractive employer, and is also able to expand its pool of potential candidates for roles it is trying to fulfill in the business. Succession planning is one critical process for global companies and English is a must for most leadership roles. It’s crucial that every organization has robust recruiting resources and assessment testing in place to ensure that they have the right talent, create a strong leadership bench and are managing them effectively. It’s about confidence, the ability to develop career opportunities cross-borders, and extending their knowledge to their families.
India is an example of a country that has seen success with learning English business solutions to advance company capabilities in a global way. In a country where most talent gets about 3 to 4 offers in one day, you need to be able to make decision fast based on accurate assessment. In the BPO (business process outsourcing) sector specifically there have been many companies who have turned their recruitment practice from very poor assessments to passing fully digitalized tests comprised of four skills -- writing, listening, speaking and comprehension in English. Further, results are able to be shared in near real-time in as little as 15 minutes.
However, language proficiency is not enough to communicate and collaborate. Many companies understand that focusing on sharpening employee skills is necessary to communicate and collaborating in the language, but what will make a company truly successful on the global scale? In Asia for instance a large amount of the learning is around how to go beyond the culture barrier to converse and be active in international meetings. It is often seen rude to interrupt someone, however, knowing how and when will enable someone to change from being a silent to an active participant -- a very key skill in closing business deals in the Western hemisphere. It’s important to not only focus on the proficiency of the language but in which context do you need to use it.
However Learning will not be sufficient on it owns. Those businesses who have seen the most progress are the ones cultivating a business environment in which every employee has the opportunity to harness their best skills and apply them to something truly rewarding for both the employee and company benefit. Through peer coaching and e-learning, employees are able to receive personalized and targeted feedback playing to their strengths, while improving their weaknesses to become more successful and established in their role. In doing so, the organization can look to benefit from high productivity levels and unprecedented levels of success.
Photo Credit: Igor Petrov/Shutterstock
Karine Allouche Salanon is General Manager of Pearson English Business Solutions