Employers |
Skills
Are you confident that your staff have the skills they need to deal with customers, colleagues or business partners from other countries and cultures? Expanding your organisation's skills base could well improve customer service, stimulate new business opportunities and help develop a more cohesive and productive workforce. Several studies have been carried out across the UK into how employers and the economy can benefit from addressing language and cultural skill shortages.
Auditing and benchmarking skills
Once you have identified your business needs and completed your planning, it may be worth conducting an audit of the language skills which your staff already have. You may be surprised at the results! The UK National Language Standards and the European Language Portfolio are both tools which you can use to identify and map your staff's language capability. If you are interested in a more formal skills audit, it may be appropriate to engage a language professional.
Developing skills
If you do not already have the in-house languages capacity which you need, you may wish to consider training for existing staff.
Contact your local (Regional) Language Network to find a language trainer in your area. Make sure that you have a clear idea of your expectations; use the National Language Standards to identify the types of skill you would like staff to develop for their various job roles. For information and advice on recruiting staff with language skills, go to the Solvit website.
Engaging a professional
For some types of business activity, it is not appropriate or cost-effective to rely on a member of staff who happens to have some language skills. There can be huge risks in both the public and private sectors, for example, in failing to engage a professionally qualified language service provider. It could be damaging, for example, to enter into commercial negotiations or interactions with patients, without commissioning a professional, qualified interpreter. For more information, go to our language services pages.
Contact your local (Regional) Language Network to find a language trainer in your area. Make sure that you have a clear idea of your expectations; use the National Language Standards to identify the types of skill you would like staff to develop for their various job roles.
For information and advice on recruiting staff with language skills, go to the Solvit website.
