4 reasons to Add Corporate Language Learning to Your Company
4 reasons to Add Corporate Language Learning to Your Company
Learning a language is a long process. It can take months until you can express yourself clearly, and years before you sound like a native speaker. Why would you invest your funds in teaching language at your company when you could hire a translator or an employee who already knows the language?
That’s the question we’re going to answer in this blog.
Talking business
English is the lingua franca of the modern business world. Whether you’re making a deal with a manufacturer in China or negotiating with a retailer in Peru, the odds are, you can get away with not speaking Chinese or Spanish. You can close a successful deal by being a confident English speaker.
Not everybody in the world speaks English, but most people who are in business do. This means your team can only learn English, one of the easiest languages to learn and improve your company’s bottom line dramatically with this one skill.
English opens your company up for B2Bpartnerships all across the world. But what if you’re an international company that provides B2C services to people from all around the world? The businessmen may know enough English to negotiate with you, but the common folks rarely do.
If that’s your situation, you may want to consider learning a language other than English. French, Chinese, and Spanish are a great choice because they’re spoken around the world. With half a billion Spanish speakers and over 275 million francophones, not counting the 1.3 billion Chinese speakers, you’re looking at a huge market you can tap into. Korean and Japanese are harder to learn but these markets are very promising too.
Why not hire a translator? Learning a language can be much cheaper than paying a decent salary to a team of translators. If you’re hiring people who speak the target language to work as customer support, you’ll need a supporting management team to help them adjust. And last, but not least, there are plenty of other benefits to corporate language learning.
A good deal for employees
Learning languages provides you with so many opportunities. The downside is, it can be expensive and keeping your motivation up as you do it on your own can be hard. This is why so many employees would love their company to provide language courses for them as one of the benefits.
Karen Smith, a senior staff officer at Cake HR Software, says that the company’s interviews with their employees revealed that few people are interested in perks like a friendly team and free coffee when they look at a job listing. What they’re looking for is the company’s readiness to invest in employees by providing free learning.
If you add corporate language learning to the list of free courses your employees can get when they work for you, you’re inviting in highly-motivated people who want to get better. That’s the kind of employee anybody wants.
Building loyalty
A language learning course doesn’t just attract new talent. It helps you retain your current employees who may be thinking about leaving.
The problem of the modern workforce is the lack of loyalty and trust. An employer can sack someone without further notice to cut losses. An employee can leave the company on the spot if they’re offered a bigger payroll. From the employee’s perspective, it’s only fair. Why would they care about the company if the company doesn’t care for them?
You can turn the tables and start caring first. If you show you’re willing to invest in your employees they will thank you with loyalty.
Smarter employees
Learning a language is hard. You need to open your brain to new experiences, learn from failures, and memorize a ton of new information. This is why learning a language makes you smarter. A person who’s learning a language keeps their brain active and increases their memory.
All of this will make sure your employees both learn a language and work more effectively.
Wrap up
Corporate language learning offers a ton of benefits for your company. It doesn’t only give your employees the skill to bring the company to new markets, it creates a bond with your employees. As a result, your bottom line improves and your employees stay with you longer.
Don’t miss out on these benefits, start a language learning course today.
BIO: Eliza Medley is an experienced tutor, educator, and psychologist.
Eliza is fond of blogging, motivation articles, and education tips.
Follow @Eliza_Medley on Twitter.
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