UK 
United StatesC’est bon! The hidden cultural & performance advantages of helping staff learn a new language
Language learning can help your employees embrace self-reflection, agility, and continuous improvement
Should you have been lucky enough to travel abroad to a country that’s primary language is different than yours, it’s likely you came away wishing that you’d paid a bit more attention in those school language classes.
If only you could have seamlessly placed your order without that café waiter rolling their eyes in frustration! How enjoyable it would have been to listen in to the conversations around you on the beach or in the town square, picking up fragments of stories from unfamiliar cultures!
Countless studies have shown that plenty of UK adults regret not having learned another language earlier in their life; or are frustrated that their language lessons of yesteryear left them far from fluent.
Fortunately, it’s never too late to learn a language. But many adults undoubtedly need support in making it happen, and employers can play a crucial role in making it happen.
Why should employers help staff become multilingual?
True, learning a foreign language could help someone order a round of drinks in a foreign restaurant with the distinction and grace of a swarthy diplomat; or ensure they thank someone (merci beaucoup) rather than praising them for their nice bottom (merci bea cul).
But encouraging employees to begin learning another language and supporting them on the journey has more business-specific benefits. Some notable benefits of developing multilingual staff include:
- Improved communication: Particularly for international businesses, multilingualism can help employees understand, empathise, communicate, and problem solve with employees or other stakeholders. Fewer misunderstandings and less friction means greater productivity and better-quality teamwork.
- Increased belonging: A multilingual culture can help all employees feel a sense of belonging regardless of their primary language, helping drive engagement and cohesion across teams.
- Expanded markets: The flexibility to communicate with clients in their preferred language can build appreciation and trust as the business expands into new markets.
- Greater talent pools: A workforce where employees can speak multiple languages and receive cultural or training can expand talent pools to include other countries. Moreover, it can help a company stand out as an employer-of-choice in the job market for highly skilled employees who wish to speak their preferred language.
- More internal mobility: Providing language training can bring down siloes between teams by removing the shackles of language barriers. This offers staff greater career development opportunities and can help employers move staff more freely between teams.
If those primary benefits weren’t reason enough for any employer to consider language development training for staff, there are also lesser-known secondary benefits associated with learning a new language.
Many employers don’t yet appreciate that encouraging staff to learn new languages can help develop a growth mindset, pushing employees to practice self-reflection and giving them the agility and confidence to continuously improve.
By learning something new, employees gain confidence in their ability to grow and become comfortable with making (and learning from) mistakes. And as anyone who has learned a language will tell you, mistakes will be plentiful—patience and resilience are crucial traits in this long but rewarding process.
The act of learning a new language will leave your employees adept at spotting their mistakes, figuring out what went wrong, and correcting their action. Those behaviours are just as useful when completing a client project as they are when remembering what noun case to use.
Where to start when offering language development to employees
If you’re one of those individuals who has tried – and failed – to deliver on a New Year’s Resolution to learn a new language, you’ll know how tricky it can be to even get started on that journey. A language learning app? A local evening class? Binging TV shows dubbed in a foreign language with the subtitles in English?
Similarly, it’s daunting for employers to know where to start when creating a compelling language development learning program. Like most training programs, the best programs are blended, offering a mixture of learning streams that range from presentation-based courses to gamified apps, or immersive podcasts to (virtual) classroom-based learning.
Some companies may have the resources in-house to build and create comprehensive foreign language training programs, but for the vast majority of employers, this isn’t feasible. Working with an external partner like Babbel, the world’s leading language learning platform, can be a valuable option to get the infrastructure in place to deliver effective language training that keeps employees motivated, engaged, and on track with their learning journey.
Leaning on expert support can help HR, Talent, and Learning & Development leaders on the unique journey to integrating language into employee development, driving the long-term benefits on company culture and performance detailed above.
Babbel is the world’s leading language learning platform with over 10 million subscribers and offers 60,000 lessons across 14 languages, hand-crafted by 200 didactics experts. Our B2B product provides highly effective solutions for businesses. Find out more on www.babbelforbusiness.com
