LANGUAGE TRAINING TO RETAIN RISING TALENT
Resources for HR Professionals
The Consequences of Losing Rising Talent
Is your global enterprise retaining its most promising employees? Executives have always prioritized employee retention, but today it’s more critical than ever. High-potential employees are difficult to replace, especially amid the ongoing labor shortages after Covid-19 and the Great Resignation.
Remember also that the rising talent of today will become your organization’s leaders of tomorrow. Every high-potential employee who leaves your company weakens your leadership pipeline. So how can you retain your rising talent? There are lots of strategies, of course. But one that global companies often overlook is language training. As veteran language trainers, we’ve seen over and over how language training helps organizations engage and retain high-potential employees.
If your organization grapples with high turnover among rising talent, you’re well aware of the myriad problems it brings. First, there’s the significant financial cost. Gallup estimates that U.S. businesses lose a staggering $1 trillion annually due to voluntary turnover.
On top of that, when a high-potential employee leaves your organization, you also lose out on any return on the investment you made in them through signing bonuses, relocation expenses, etc.
Productivity also plummets when high-potential employees jump ship. The entire process of hiring—creating job postings, vetting resumes, interviewing candidates, and onboarding—consumes precious time. Moreover, turnover tarnishes a company’s reputation. In the era of social media and Glassdoor, news about a company grappling with turnover, especially among rising talent, spreads swiftly.
As we touched on earlier, failing to retain high-potential employees has long-term consequences for your leadership pipeline. When one of these employees leaves your company, you aren’t just losing their current contributions. You’re also possibly losing a future leader. With half of top organizations already worried about their leadership pipeline, this isn’t an area you can afford to weaken.
For more ways to help your employees
learn a new language, check out our blog.
Why Language Training Helps Retention
Language training can help you retain rising talent in several different ways. First, employees crave learning and development opportunities, a fact that constantly surfaces in surveys addressing turnover. Offering avenues for learning is pivotal, and language training stands out as a powerful tool for global companies looking to retain rising talent. In a survey, 58% of employees expressed a higher likelihood of remaining with a company that provides language training. While employees in general value learning and growth, it only makes sense that development opportunities like language training would be even more important to rising talent.
Next, language training shows talented employees that they have a future in your organization. High-potential employees are usually highly ambitious, and language training can support that ambition. Becoming fluent in another challenge sets your high potentials up for promotions and international assignments.
Your leaders of the future also need the skills to lead in a fast-changing world. One of the most important of those skills is collaboration. A lack of proficiency in the company’s dominant language can make an employee hesitant to speak up or lead to miscommunications with colleagues.
Language training enhances engagement by helping promising employees express their ideas and work with their colleagues more easily.
Gaining fluency can also help employees join in more conversations and build stronger ties at work. Think about how your own morale would take a hit if you couldn’t engage in small talk with your colleagues in the break room or while waiting to start a Zoom meeting.
When your high performers have friends at work, they will be happier and more engaged. In fact, friendship is one of the biggest factors in how happy employees feel at work. And, of course, happy and engaged high potentials are less likely to leave your organization.
Finally, just like all of us, your high-potential employees want to feel appreciated and valued. By investing in your top talent through language training, you are signaling to them that you care about their success.
As a bonus for your organization, employees who feel valued are more productive and engaged.
Tailoring Language Training for Rising Talent
Not all language training programs are created equal. Cookie-cutter classes with irrelevant vocabulary lists will just leave your high-potential employees bored. Effective language training for these employees must be customized based on individual needs, job roles, and specific business vocabulary.
Language training also needs a human touch. You learned your first language because you wanted to communicate with the people around you.
Learning another language is no different. The best language training programs include lots of conversational practice. This is one reason that apps alone aren’t enough to make your employees fluent in their target language.
High performers love setting and achieving goals. To keep them motivated, any language training program you choose should include regular progress reports.
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How Fluency Corp Language Classes Work
Fluency Corp boasts a proven track record of aiding companies in retaining rising talent across departments through language training.
Recognizing the importance of flexibility, we offer in-person and online language classes worldwide, all led by live instructors who are native speakers of the language they teach.
The Bellieu Method, our proprietary approach, ensures personalized and effective training, far from one-size-fits-all solutions.
Our language classes can help your employees achieve long-term goals, like advancing a level in language fluency, or short-term goals, like gaining confidence with clients who speak a different language.
Whatever your employees’ goals are, their Fluency instructor will focus on language skills they’ll use every day. We ask your employees about their job, their role, their meetings, their presentations. There’s nothing cookie-cutter about our training.
We also make sure both high potentials and their leaders understand the progress employees are making in language training. We schedule regular check-ins and solicit feedback from others on how the employee is using their new language skills.
Intrigued? Get to know Fluency Corp better through our client testimonials, case studies, and insights into our proprietary Bellieu Method. Let’s discuss how language training can bolster your retention of rising talent and contribute to your broader business objectives. Open the conversation by reaching out to us today.
Get More Info About Our Language Training Resources
We’d love to talk with you more about how we can support your work with global relocations and international collaboration. To get additional information about how Fluency Corp works with HR professionals seeking language training resources, call us for a free consultation at (800) 401-3159 or fill out the form below.
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