If you have a multilingual workforce in your company, let us congratulate you! That is one of the best things you could do for your business; it’ll have many benefits in the short and long term.
But there might be some struggles with communication there. Maybe you and your employees feel a bit confused among so many languages. This can lead to you wondering how to improve communication among your multilingual workforce.
Don’t worry, there’s no shame in admitting you need help with that. In fact, in doing so you may gain a lot and be able to upgrade your business and its communication problems.
Good news! Here at Fluency Corp, we know how important languages, speaking and conveying a message is for any business. So we want to give you some tips.
Benefits of Improving Communication in Your Multilingual Workforce
1. Make your employees work life easier
If there’s not proper communication in your company among the workers, they won’t feel very happy. They’ll rather feel discouraged about not being able to express their ideas as they truly think them or not being able to talk with everybody.
They’ll also feel sad that they aren’t fluent in all the languages spoken at the company to fully discuss projects or problems.
But, if you work to solve the communication problem, your employees have a better chance at doing all of that. Therefore, they’ll feel like it’s easier to talk with anybody in the business about anything. They’ll be able to fully express themselves.
If they feel like they can communicate clearly and completely, they’ll feel their time at work is easier. They already have to solve the problems that come up in their job area and work. So let’s not make it more difficult for them by not having proper communication.
2. Sense of community
Having a multilingual workforce has many benefits. But it can happen that communication is difficult and confusing, because there are many languages being spoken, and not everybody knows them.
This can make people feel isolated and not strengthen the relationship with their coworkers. It can also make people speak and socialize only with native or fluent speakers of their mother tongue.
For example: Japanese people will only coexist with coworkers that also speak Japanese. Though this is not bad, it will create groups and won’t include everyone. Plus, it’ll make employees stay in their comfort zone and not grow.
If you fix the communication problem among your multilingual workforce, everybody will feel more included. Because they all will share ideas, discuss topics and speak with everybody. You’ll build a sense of community among the whole company.
3. Better performance
Employees will have better performance if there’s effective and successful communication at the workplace. Why? Because they can discuss their ideas, present their projects, participate in meetings, meet with clients, and even socialize with coworkers. This will be reflected in each person’s job.
Without good communication, there’s no way all of the work goals can be met. People need to talk between them, because different areas of one company can affect each other.
A business is a whole, there’s not just one part of it that matters. Therefore, it needs great communication among all its parts. If they all communicate, they all will do a better job.
4. Company growth
If you have good communication in your business, your employees will be able to speak, share and resolve anything. Which will make your company have it all together. No one will be guessing the other person’s ideas or messages, nor feeling confused about their own work. This will take your company to the right places and grow.
Make your employees’ work life feel easier, build a sense of community at the office, and allow the employees to work properly by having good communication. This will make everybody happy and more successful. Which will also lead to your company’s growth.
If you do otherwise and don’t have clear communication, the company might seem that it’s a mess. Like they say in Spanish: “No tiene pies ni cabeza”. There’s no coherence. This will not make for a successful and ever-growing business.
Tips for a Better Communication at Your Multilingual Company
Ask your employees what they need
If your employees are having trouble communicating among themselves, you can ask them what they need. Maybe you can arrange a meeting with a representative of each area of your company or a representative of each language that’s spoken there.
Or you can create an online poll for feedback, so every employee participates and externalizes their opinions. You can also create paper questionnaires for everyone if you prefer.
Whatever the method you choose to use, make sure to ask them about the language barriers and their communication problems. What do they think they need? What are the main problems they have to face related to language?
Do they have any ideas or tips? Which languages do they use the most to communicate with their coworkers and their clients? Which languages help them the most achieve their business goals?
Asking them what they need to improve their communication will make them feel listened to and seen. It’ll also help you see which things you have to target first to start making an improvement. Truly listen to all the feedback!
Basically, this is the first step towards better communication among the employees. As well as a better transmission of the goals and mission of your company. And a stronger connection with everyone.
Act on the issues
Have you asked your employees and coworkers about their language needs? Great! Now it’s time to assess their answers, reflect on the problems they have, and come up with solutions.
You don’t have to do this alone. If you have a support team or a business manager, bring them up! Make a meeting with them and discuss everything your workers said, and the linguistic problems that you’ve also noticed in your company. Then, brainstorm ideas to improve communication. Create a plan for improvement.
Of course, talking is not enough. After the meeting is done, it’s time to implement the plan. Everybody involved must start working on it, including you. The boss, founder or CEO is highly important for this to work.
Implement a lingua franca
Working in a multilingual workplace means that there are probably many different languages spoken there. You may have employees and coworkers that speak Spanish, others that speak French, some more Mandarin or Portuguese, and so on. This is incredible! But it can also be chaotic; nobody knows all the languages.
If you hire bilingual employees, you might expect them to help each other. You can rely on the Spanish speakers helping you or others understand another Spanish speaker employee. Or the Russian speakers helping everyone understand another Russian speaker employee.
But this might still be a bit tough and chaotic. Plus, not everybody can be at one place to work as a translator for others all the time. They all have their job roles to fulfill.
No worries. What you can do is recruit bilingual employees but specify one of the languages that they must speak. This would be what people call “lingua franca”. For example: Open a job vacancy for bilingual employees but tell them that one of the languages they speak must be English. That’s non-negotiable.
This way, you’ll have workers that speak different languages but can still understand each other through English. This will also make it easier for you to be able to speak with and understand everyone.
For example: Let’s say someone that speaks Spanish needs to talk with a coworker that speaks Japanese, but neither of them knows each other’s language. That’s okay, because they can communicate using English. In this scenario, the lingua franca is English.
If you already have a bilingual workforce, you don’t have to get rid of them. Just encourage them to learn the lingua franca that you want to implement in the office. This language can be one that you and most of the employees speak. This way everyone can communicate with everyone. Also encourage your other coworkers to help each other.
Be Culturally Aware
Different languages mean different nationalities, therefore different cultures. This can also contribute to some difficulties with communication among the workforces. Because not only does everybody speak different languages, but they also have different perspectives on how to communicate a message.
Some are very serious and formal when talking and discussing business and may even come across as tight to others. Some others might be more informal, and they may come across to other people as way too relaxed and like they don’t care enough.
Some others are more direct when asking things and some are shyer and aren’t as straightforward. None of these things are bad, they’re just different cultures and approaches.
This kind of communication clashes happen even in the slightest things, like when greeting in business and saying goodbye. Some cultures are warmer and prefer to hug or even kiss than others, who rather just give a handshake.
To improve in this aspect and help everybody empathize with the different cultures, you must do the same first. Watch how others work, view business, and communicate things. You should also listen to what they have to say to you about their cultures. Learn about them.
You might even end up incorporating some of the things you like the most about these cultures into your business.
Then, encourage the employees to talk about their cultural differences and similarities to their coworkers. Motivate them to share their culture. This way, they’ll understand each other more and see that everybody has something awesome to add to the business.
You might also want to look for cultural awareness courses for the whole company. So everybody can learn to better handle these cultural barriers and use them to their favor.
Provide Language Training Tools
If you provide your workforce with language learning tools, you’ll help them thrive in a multilingual workplace and communicate more effectively. You can do this through different resources:
- Give them access to language learning apps
- Give them free access to language learning podcasts
- Provide them with a few audio books in the company’s lingua franca every month
- Email your employees a newsletter every month that contains a list of online resources for language learning and improvement
But here’s the best you can do for their bilingual communication skills: Provide them Fluency Corp classes.
You can offer all of this as part of the company’s benefits. This will attract hardworking people interested in improving and growing even more. As well as motivating the employees that already work with you.
It’ll make everyone see that you truly care about helping your workforce improve their language skills and not leaving them to their own devices. After all, they work for you and help your business grow.
But what is Fluency Corp? Why is it so special?
Fluency Corp Enhances the Communication of Your Multilingual Company
If you want help for you and your employees to improve their bilingual skills for more effective communication, we’re your solution!
Fluency Corp is a corporate language training school with native teachers! What does this mean? That you’ll learn from the best, from those that know the language inside out, all its nuances and how natives truly use it. Plus, you’ll get to hear the real accent of your target language, therefore improving your listening and pronunciation.
On top of that, our programs are customized to the job and your needs. So, tell us, what do you need to learn? Is it Spanish for business? Or words and phrases to prepare for a job interview in Portuguese? Or maybe some cultural differences with another country? Whatever it is, we’re here to help!
Wait! We know one of the things you and your company needs the most: Proper and fluent communication, right? Then you’ll be glad to hear all our classes are based on the Bellieu Method, created by our founder, Micah Bellieu.
After years of learning languages, she realized practicing for real life is the best way to learn. So through our Bellieu Method we encourage students to speak in their target language in every class using everything they’ve learned. So, they’ll achieve language fluency!
Oh, and don’t forget we have many different languages to choose from. From English and Spanish to French, Mandarin, German, and many more. So whichever your business and workforce needs, we’ll gladly teach it.
Don’t wait any longer! Invest in your work team’s language skills and watch your company communicate messages more effectively.
You just have to choose between our online or onsite classes. For more information contact us for a free consultation; we’ll answer any doubts.
