As regional economies develop and become more competitive, businesses worldwide are beginning to realize these economies’ staggering potential to boost their growth. To fully tap that potential, old assumptions regarding how companies and markets need to be reexamined.
A lot has been said about how a multilingual approach can help a business draw in more clients or sales and boost its growth on the global stage. But it’s also something that companies may need to consider for their day-to-day operations. This article will discuss the opportunities and challenges that globalization brings to companies’ management practices and the role that translation services play in our increasingly globalized business landscape.
The Rise of the Digital Office
One major trend that businesses need to consider is the growing remote workplace in the current business landscape. With remote work on the rise, companies have been forced to restrategize their operations, adapting to the new norm of digital workspaces. And with digital workspaces normalized, businesses have taken this opportunity to expand globally.
Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for companies to have entire teams or departments based in a different region and, often, speak a foreign language. “One major benefit of this trend is that companies can now easily tap into a wider pool of international talent,” says Maya Ronen, the COO of translation services Tomedes, which has fully embraced remote work.
The company’s day-to-day operations are divided among its headquarters in Tel Aviv and remote teams based worldwide, such as Paris, Melbourne, Manila, and several major cities in the US.
Challenges of a Global Multilingual Workplace
This setup does come with its own set of difficulties. First among these is managing employees across different time zones. “The simplest solution is to have simultaneous schedules across all time zones,” Ronen says. “This does mean teams in certain areas can end up with odd hours, so we have made efforts to mitigate this.”
One location where the company maintains a sizable workforce in Manila, where regular work hours are from 1 to 9 pm. “By consolidating our teams in strategic locations, we’re able to ensure that our employees are working at reasonable hours,” she explains.
Another common challenge is establishing rapport and encouraging more engagement among employees in a virtual setting. Remote work doesn’t present the same opportunities for organic interaction among employees as in a physical office, so companies must create a suitable alternate workspace to keep them happy. There are quite a few strategies to do this, but the critical thing is maintaining open and positive lines of communication.
Don’t Overlook Language.
And then there’s the matter of Language. Rising economies are beginning to challenge the longstanding assumption of English as the lingua franca of business. Forbes asserts that supporting multilingualism and multiculturalism in the workplace helps a company better handle the increasingly competitive globalized business landscape. It benefits quality and productivity and leads to a safer and more fulfilling work environment due to better communication and rapport.
Translation Services in the HR Setting
“We’ve handled translation projects for HR departments looking to improve support for their global teams that speak different languages,” says Ronen. In her line of work, it’s a matter of applying what her company offers to its clients toward in-house operations.
Ronen mentions several places where translation may be used to improve the multilingual employee experience, some examples of which are below:
- Employee handbook. This is the primary source of information regarding not only the basics of a company, such as its mission and principles, but also its policies and other matters relevant to employment. Thus it’s essential to have this document available in a language that employees can easily understand.
- Training material. Having courses available in your employees’ native Language increases training effectiveness. It ensures that everyone has fair access to the learning opportunities that would enable them to advance in their profession.
- Forms and contracts. Every employee has to deal with paperwork from HR at some point. Having documents available in their Language is not just a matter of legal compliance but also makes dealing with claims and applications much more accessible.
- Newsletters and notices. There’s a lot of company information that employees may need to keep up with regularly, and making this information available in the language employees speak not only encourages them to stay in the loop but also prevents miscommunications that could lead to all kinds of damage.
