The adoption of common language poilcies in companies - Essay Example

Common language Number of words: 680 words The adoption of common language policies in companies Several companies have tried to implement the common language policy in order to expand their reach and facilitate diverse collaboration of employees across linguistic and national boundaries. Among the languages, English is the most preferred business language adopted by many companies regardless of the origin of the company. In recent years, there are several companies setting up English-only policies.

These include SAP, Siemens, Nokia, Daimler AG, Kone Elevators, Technicolor, Microsoft, Nissan, Phillips and Rakuten1. It has been noted contrary to the aim of common language policy of increasing efficiencies and ensuring increased coordination of global work. It tends to spawn behaviors and emotions resulting to inefficiencies and poor collaborative efforts hence, leading to poor performance and low company productivity. These inefficiencies tend to be overlooked since the companies direct their attention to the benefits of linguistic integration in order to fit in the globalizing market.

The main reason English is being adopted fall under the pressure from the external global players who seem to be well equipped with the English language and its application in the business field. In addition, there is too much diversification of tasks related to a company among countries. If the corporate goals rely on departments within different countries that are working harmoniously, language becomes a significant element. Implementation of language mandate has revealed challenges in the transition from diverse languages to a common language2.

The experience that employees have had when working using another language or engaging with a non-native speaker has proved difficult. GlobalTech, FrechCo, Global Moves, Carco and ChipCo are some of the companies that have tried or rather have implemented the language mandate. All of the companies are from different countries of origin; Germany, French, Japanese, United States and United States respectively. The language mandate was put into test, and the impact analyzed that shows that it resulted to psychological and emotional impacts to the employees3.

GlobalTech introduced English to the German Employees, and this resulted to ineffective communication. FrenchCo had employees who were non-native speakers who were originally from France, but experienced challenged in having to communicate in English since some lacked sophisticated language skills. The same case is evident for GlobalMoves, Japanese Company where much time was wasted in a task that could have been done easily. For example, a task that takes half an hour would take the employees many hours to complete in English language.

They however were obligated to defend their work by communicating in English, which was somehow frustrating. Most non-native speakers, despite having varied levels in skills associated to English fluency; there was an inner feeling of diminished professional standing when their company’s management designated English a requirement. One of the employees from FrenchCo explained how she was comfortable in her natural French language since it helps someone master communication. If one is denied the chance to use the native language, most of the abilities are lost4.

According to an employee, from GlobalMoves most of the engineers who are in the company appear demotivated sine they are not able to speak English fluently in their line of duty5. The gap between English and mother tongue in most cases remains stark and has consequences not only to the performance of an employee but also to the productivity of the company. Since it is a global trend, non-natives should seek to understand what their fellow associates or clients are saying and ensure they spend hours of daily practice in order to help development of verbal agility.

ReferencesNeeley, T. B., Hinds, P. J., and Cramton, C. D. “The (Un) Hidden Turmoil of Language in Global Collaboration. Organizational Dynamics, 2012, pp. 236-244