<div dir="ltr">Instituting a Corporate Language Hiring Policy Is Easier than You Think
<table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td colspan="2" style="width:40%" class="gmail-standardfontWithoutPadding">
Posted by
<span id="gmail-dnn_ctr390_DNNKnowledgebase_ctl00_lblUserID"> <a href="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/AnalystView.aspx?AuthorID=11">Rebecca Ray</a></span> on <span id="gmail-dnn_ctr390_DNNKnowledgebase_ctl00_lblStartDate">January 3, 2018</span>
<span id="gmail-dnn_ctr390_DNNKnowledgebase_ctl00_lblFilledUnder"> in the following blogs: <a class="gmail-standardfontWithoutPadding" href="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Default.aspx?tabid=63&BCatID=74">Best Practices</a>, <a class="gmail-standardfontWithoutPadding" href="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Default.aspx?tabid=63&BCatID=76">Business Globalization</a></span>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<hr>
<br>
<br>
<div style="overflow:auto;width:100%;color:rgb(0,0,0);height:auto">
<table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td class="gmail-standardfontWithoutPadding" style="font-weight:normal" align="left">
<div style="float:left;display:inline">
<img id="gmail-dnn_ctr390_DNNKnowledgebase_ctl00_imgAuthor" src="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Portals/_default/Knowledgebase/AuthorImages/Rebecca300.png" style="height: 100px; width: 100px; float: left; padding-right: 30px; padding-bottom: 10px;">
</div>
How
do you decide whether potential employees need to understand, speak,
read, and write the same language that’s used at company headquarters?
Which criteria should human resources (HR) and hiring managers apply
when evaluating potential hires who will work out of regional offices? <a href="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/AbstractView/tabid/74/ArticleID/48504/Title/EstablishingaCorporateLanguageHiringPolicy/Default.aspx" target="_blank">Based on recent consulting and advisory sessions with global companies</a>, here are four pointers to help you develop hiring profiles for international staff:<br>
<br>
<img alt="" src="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Portals/0/images/Blog/2018/2018-01-03/crowd.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 300px;"><br>
<br>
<ol><li><strong>Integrate four types of fluency into decision-making.</strong>
These are listening, speaking, reading, and writing in the corporate
language. Not all job functions require expertise in all four areas. For
example, app developers in Romania may need only to read and write well
enough to produce code, e-mails, and documentation in English (or
whichever language your company mandates). However, the in-country
marketing team in Brazil has to be fluent in all four areas because it
participates in weekly calls with teams all over the world and reviews
corporate campaigns and videos for local adaptation.<br>
</li><li><strong>Identify what each employee group must accomplish.</strong>
Their job functions will determine how articulate they need to be in
your corporate language. Will they participate in conference calls with
headquarters, other offices, or partners worldwide? Will they work daily
with non-localized back-end systems? Even those with less frequent or
minimal interactions in your common business tongue, for example, local
cleaning or sales staff, will need some training in the corporate
language. To raise them to a minimal level of proficiency, provide
training videos, short manuals, or access to online language courses as
employee benefits.<br>
</li><li><strong>Map out typical communication paths.</strong> Not all
e-mails, conference calls, webinars, and presentations originate from
headquarters, especially as you expand. To encourage collaboration,
in-country offices and partners must be able to communicate between
themselves, as well as with the home office. In that case, it’s usually
most effective for interactions to take place in the corporate-mandated
lingua franca.<br>
</li><li><strong>Create use cases for internal systems.</strong> These
will enable your company to determine whether it requires localization
or enhanced training materials. For example, if salespeople in Japan and
China will use the corporate-wide CRM system, this system must – at a
minimum – be internationalized to accept local-language characters,
address formats, and telephone numbers. Depending on the importance of
the markets in question and your chosen profiles, you may opt to
localize some – or all – of the corporate systems in the future.
However, you don’t necessarily have to do that for the first round of
hires.</li></ol>
Don’t get hung up on the requirement that all employees must speak the
language used at headquarters. Identify scenarios where communication in
the corporate language is expected – as well as where it may not be
required. Assess the degree of fluency in speaking, reading, writing,
and listening separately for each job function. Expand your hiring
sources and validate fluency claims by candidates. Following these
guidelines and planning for hiring profiles to change over time will
make your corporate language policy decision-making much easier –
especially for monolingual hiring managers and HR staff.
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div align="right">
</div>
<br>
<table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td title="Title" class="gmail-standardfontBold" style="padding-bottom:4px;padding-top:4px">
Related Research
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="gmail-standardfont">
<a href="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/AbstractView.aspx?ArticleID=48504">Establishing a Corporate Language Hiring Policy </a>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br>
<span id="gmail-dnn_ctr390_DNNKnowledgebase_ctl00_lblKeywords">Keywords: <a href="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Blogs.aspx?KeyWordID=168">Enterprise process globalization</a>, <a href="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Blogs.aspx?KeyWordID=169">Global workforce development</a>, <a href="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Blogs.aspx?KeyWordID=112">Language learning and education</a>, <a href="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Blogs.aspx?KeyWordID=142">Language policy</a>, <a href="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Blogs.aspx?KeyWordID=111">Language proficiency testing</a>, <a href="http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Blogs.aspx?KeyWordID=147">Staff training and education</a></span>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
</div>