As an increasing number of businesses expand to make their products and services available overseas, the demand for corporate language training programs has risen too.
Ensuring that employees are able to communicate clearly and efficiently is key to building strong relationships, both internally and with new and existing partners and clients. With this in mind, investing in corporate language courses can have a number of benefits, from improved employee language and communication skills to increased productivity.
Let’s take a look at some of the most important reasons your organization may want to implement a corporate language training program.
Why do companies implement corporate language training?
Many companies offer various different types of professional development for employees, from certification programs to management and leadership training. But why would organizations choose to implement corporate language training in particular?
One of the most important reasons a company may choose to invest in corporate language learning is that it helps them create viable candidates rather than find new talent.
Studies show that investing in employee training is more cost effective than hiring new talent. In fact, according to Wharton research, external hires cost up to 20% more than those promoted from within. Not only that, they also get significantly lower performance evaluations for their first two years on the job and have higher exit rates.
This shows that upskilling your workforce can also reduce employee turnover. This is important as research shows that high employee turnover rates can reduce business profits and negatively impact your bottom line.
Company-wide benefits of corporate language training
Corporate language training can have a number of important company-wide impacts and benefits, so let’s take a closer look at each of the ways it may enhance your organization’s success while also boosting employee satisfaction.
Improve company culture
Research shows that culturally diverse companies are more innovative than those with less diversity, which highlights the importance of promoting diversity in the workplace.
Since culturally diverse companies tend to hire more employees who are non-native speakers of English, corporate language training is an effective way to help your employees understand the cultures and values that exist in different countries. This is an important step towards building a positive company culture where each member of the team feels understood and respected.
Increase productivity and efficiency
Helping your employees overcome any language barriers that may exist will help them feel more confident when communicating with both clients and coworkers. This boost in confidence will in turn help them become more productive and efficient when it comes to making calls, writing emails and advising clients, as well as collaborating with colleagues.
Expand business partnerships
The ability to communicate with potential clients and customers in their own language can increase the trust that they place in you and your company. For this reason, ensuring that more people within your company are able to communicate efficiently in a number of different languages can open up opportunities to partner up with businesses in different parts of the world and expand into international markets.
Strengthen employee retention
Strengthening employee retention is by far one of the most important reasons to implement corporate language courses. Employees are more likely to commit to your company in the long term if you’re willing to invest in their training and development. Since the cost of hiring replacement employees is higher than the cost of training your current employees, investing in language training is simply a smart business decision.
Develop a pipeline of talent
In addition to strengthening employee retention, investing in corporate language training programs can also help you attract new talent. This is important for organizations that may be looking to expand, because while upskilling employees is more cost effective than hiring new ones, an expanding organization will often have more job openings to fill than employees who are already working within the company.
Young people in particular value skills training, and one recent Gallup survey found that 66% of workers aged between 18-24 ranked learning new skills as one of the top three most important perks when evaluating new job opportunities.
Now that you’re aware of the benefits your organization could reap from implementing a corporate language training program, it’s time to find out more about the training options available to you and take practical steps towards implementing them.
Not sure where to start? Berlitz offers a range of language and cultural training courses, both face-to-face and online. Find out how we can help.
