Globalisation is changing the way we work. With large organisations expanding rapidly and the rise of remote working, it’s becoming increasingly common to work and collaborate with people around the world. People you might never meet – or even speak to.
Diverse workforces
Diverse workforces do incredible things for businesses. They allow you to tap into new markets, reach new audiences, and uncover a competitive advantage. But they also bring a unique set of challenges. Particularly when you’ve got multiple languages in use across your organisation.
How can you communicate across language barriers without losing any efficiency? Let’s look at one major way you can better support your multilingual workforce.
The problem
Research shows that only 31% of executives speak two languages. And the statistics fall from there. 20% of executives speak three languages, 9% speak four, and 4% speak more than four. It’s clear that embracing multiple languages is the way to tap into the most varied, global talent. However, with multiple languages in use, you’re inevitably going to come up against a language barrier – particularly when it comes to your chosen tools and systems.
A multinational organisation can’t expect everyone to speak the same language. Nor should it want to. Hiring in a single language runs the risk of excluding valuable talent. And by having multiple languages in use, you increase flexibility and broaden the audiences and opportunities you can reach.
If your organisation has international locations, you’re going to want everyone on the same page. You want to streamline operations and boost productivity by having global access to the same information and actions. But not all platforms are equipped for this.
If your platform is entirely in English, for example, non-native speakers may struggle to navigate and take in the necessary information. And this will only lead to miscommunications, errors, and inefficiencies further down the line.
What’s the solution?
To achieve standardisation across multiple sites and countries, you want to invest in platforms and tools that enable automatic translations. With easy translations, you can ensure every member of your workforce – no matter where they are – has access to the same central content (for example, a fire risk assessment audit) in the language they’re most comfortable with.
By allowing your staff to choose the language they read in, you ensure they are completely confident with the information before them, reducing the risk of any misinterpretations or confusion.
Something else to think about is documents that can’t be translated. For example, uploaded files that are site-specific. It might be worth restricting access to these by location. This way, you avoid clogging up other locations’ platforms with content that’s inaccessible or irrelevant to them.
Finally, to better understand the full picture of your operations, head office staff will want to see side-by-side overviews of all sites, irrespective of their location. But instead of needing a new platform for each additional language – which makes data reporting and comparisons a nightmare – you’ll want one centralised base for all global data and reporting.
Multilingual workforces enable organisations to become more competitive and profitable than ever before. But they also make it increasingly difficult to get everyone on the same page. Are you looking for a simpler way to manage your team? Inform People can help.
With Inform People, you benefit from greater consistency across international sites, with 24 automatic translations available. In two clicks, your staff can change the language they’re reading in, and our translation capabilities are only getting stronger and more efficient every single day. You can even use translations to add custom phrases that are unique to your organisation. To find out more, get in touch with us via email or on +44 (0)161 713 4104.
