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.
Would you know what to do if your South African contacts invited you to a braai, how to charm your Japanese partners or settle a workplace dispute between migrant workers whose first language was not English?
The Regional Language Network works with businesses in the West Midlands to help them to overcome language and cultural barriers through offering language advice, signposting and access to free resources and language services.
If you are unsure what to say or do when visiting other countries or speaking with foreign clients, the RLN has a variety of free downloadable resources to help you learn basic phrases and understand cultural differences.
The RLN provides cultural briefings on over thirty countries including Russia, China, Brazil and Germany, to help you build better working relationships and avoid the embarrassing mistakes arising from cultural misunderstandings. These PDFs offer language advice, business culture advice and information on the geography and economy of each country. Culture can often be overlooked as businesses focus on improving their knowledge of the language, but an awareness of the differences in business etiquette and knowing how to treat your hosts respectfully is equally as important as putting your language skills into practise.
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 have multilingual or migrant workers it is important to recognise the language barriers and cultural differences that will prevent effective communication. To ensure your workplace runs smoothy you will need to make sure, for example, that health and safety information is presented in the appropriate languages and that workers whose first language is not English or those who cannot understand it very well can access interpreters or mentors to assist them in work-related matters.
Would you know what to do if your South African contacts invited you to a braai, how to charm your Japanese partners or settle a workplace dispute between migrant workers whose first language was not English?
The Regional Language Network works with businesses in the West Midlands to help them to overcome language and cultural barriers through offering language advice, signposting and access to free resources and language services.
If you are unsure what to say or do when visiting other countries or speaking with foreign clients, the RLN has a variety of free downloadable resources to help you learn basic phrases and understand cultural differences.
The RLN provides cultural briefings on over thirty countries including Russia, China, Brazil and Germany, to help you build better working relationships and avoid the embarrassing mistakes arising from cultural misunderstandings. These PDFs offer language advice, business culture advice and information on the geography and economy of each country. Culture can often be overlooked as businesses focus on improving their knowledge of the language, but an awareness of the differences in business etiquette and knowing how to treat your hosts respectfully is equally as important as putting your language skills into practise.
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 have multilingual or migrant workers it is important to recognise the language barriers and cultural differences that will prevent effective communication. To ensure your workplace runs smoothy you will need to make sure, for example, that health and safety information is presented in the appropriate languages and that workers whose first language is not English or those who cannot understand it very well can access interpreters or mentors to assist them in work-related matters.
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