Connect with your Employees in their Language
As technology rapidly advances, collaboration across borders is on the rise, and business is becoming increasingly global. Amid all these changes, more and more companies are recognizing the need for language training for their executives.
Today’s business executives may find themselves leading workforces made up of employees from different countries. Understanding the languages and the cultures of all of their employees helps business leaders form genuine connections, collaborate more effectively, recognize needs, build loyalty and earn the trust of their workers.
An example of a company that really gets the importance of language training for business is Fluency Corp client Envoy Air. With more than 16,000 employees, Envoy is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Airlines Group. The company is based in Irving, Texas — which is near Fluency Corp’s home city of Dallas.
Increase Efficiency, Collaboration, & Productivity of Employees that Speak English as a Second Language
Your expat might speak English well, but have you ever asked him or her if they would like to improve in English? We can guarantee you they are still struggling to express all ideas in meetings and on work calls, especially understanding conference calls and feeling less than eager to speak up. Even top executives call us and ask us to help them be more proficient in English. They even admit to understanding just 60-70% in meetings with native English speakers. You don’t want your employees to understand 60% of what’s going on.
Fluency Corp puts together customized private lessons in office or online with live native-speaking Fluency Partners (highly-skilled language fluency teachers) who work on the exact meetings, presentations, conference calls and vocabulary needed for your expat to be confident when speaking in English. Not only that, they will be able to express their ideas more clearly, cutting down on miscommunications and confusion, and at the same time increasing collaboration, engagement and retention.
Learning Spanish to Build Rapport with Employees
A large percentage of Envoy Air’s employees in California, Texas and Florida are native Spanish speakers. Because of this, the company knew there would be business benefits from executives learning Spanish. In addition, Envoy wanted its leaders to better understand the culture of the different countries that its Spanish-speaking employees are originally from.
Envoy enlisted Fluency Corp to provide two hours a week of instruction for 10 top executives over one year. With this amount of instruction, the goal was that the executives would develop a beginner’s level proficiency in Spanish. In other words, they would be able to use and understand basic, everyday phrases.
As always, Fluency Corp customizes our language instruction based on the needs of our clients. We asked the executives what they wanted to know how to say, what topics they wanted to cover and what specific conversations they wanted to have with employees. From their responses, we learned that executives wanted to be able to talk with employees about topics such as their families and how long they have worked for the company. They wanted to be able to exchange opening and closing greetings with employees, share pleasantries and order lunch with them. Each executive also had individual needs.
Custom Language Course for Envoy Air
Fluency Corp’s instructor, a native Spanish speaker, created a one-year course for the Envoy executives. To address all of their specific needs, the course was designed to cover 10 topics for 10 hours each.
The Envoy executives were focused on speaking with their employees, and that takes plenty of speaking practice. Fluency Corp’s instruction focused on speaking games, role-play and re-creating interactions the executives would really have on the job. Every minute they spent in class was designed to be relevant to their day-to-day interactions with employees.
Envoy is already thrilled at the executives’ new confidence and proficiency when using everyday Spanish phrases. The executives are conveying that they recognize and care about the fact that many employees speak Spanish as a first language. They are bridging the gap in a really tangible way that allows everyone to respect each other and build collaborations that lead to long-term career loyalty.
Start Training Your Executives
Give your own company’s executives the edge with language training for business.
To learn more, call us for a free consultation at (800) 401-3159 or fill out the form below.
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