Businesses involved in international trade and those employing multilingual staff back home need to pay heed to language advice and cultural support to succeed respectively in their overseas endeavours and ensure harmony in the workplace.
For example would you know how to charm your Japanese partners, settle a dispute in the workplace between non-English speaking employees or know how to react if your South African contacts invited you to a braai?
The Regional Language Network (RLN) helps West Midlands’ businesses to break down language and cultural barriers by providing language advice, signposting and access to language services and resources.
If you don’t know what to do or say when visiting other countries or conversing with non-English speaking clients, the Regional Language Network offers a range of free language resources to help you get to grips with the language and culture of a variety of countries.
To enable you to forge strong business relationships and steer clear of cultural misunderstandings, the Regional Language Network provides cultural briefings on a range of countries including France, Brazil, Malaysia, China and Russia. These guides cover business culture, the basics of the language and information on the economy and geography of the country. Cultural matters are often overlooked as businesses focus first on learning the language, but understanding the differences in the local business culture and being able to demonstrate respect to your overseas contacts is just as important as showing off the basic phrases you have learned.
And it’s not just overseas…language and cultural differences within the workplace can prevent your business from running smoothly. It is worthwhile you seeking language advice from an organisation such as the RLN West Midlands if you employ migrant workers.
If you employ migrant workers or multilingual staff you need to be aware of the language and cultural barriers that will hamper effective communication. In order to keep your workplace running smoothly, you will need to ensure, for example, that health and safety information is presented in all the necessary languages and that those who do not understand or speak English very well have access to a mentor or interpreter who can assist them in meetings and important work-related matters.
Learn more about Language Advice at the RLN West Midlands website
Leave a comment