Why Your Staff Should Learn Foreign Languages
December 15, 2014 by Dr. Letitia Wright
Filed under Featured Articles, Front Page
Why Your Staff Should Learn Foreign Languages
The truth is that new markets are expanding all over the world these days at an increasing rate. The biggest growth areas will often be overseas, as a result. Here are a few ways you can take advantage of this through teaching new languages to your staff.
Be The First To Approach New Foreign Markets
It’s often the case that being the first one into a new market will often mean that you get the most rewards in that market. Just as an example, it’s estimated that millions upon millions of new Internet users from countries overseas will be connecting within the next few decades.
While you might have the equipment and expertise to take care of this new market, one thing that you certainly might lack is the language skills. That’s why it’s a good idea to hire staff that can speak other languages like Russian, Chinese or German, for example.
And if you already have all the staff that you want, another option is to train your staff in new languages. It’s often more economical than you might think to find language training courses for business that you can sign your staff up for in order to make them proficient in the use of a new language.
Learning languages is often easier than you might initially guess, and it can often be better to give basic language skill in a new area to existing staff members who already have years upon years of training in their niche industry rather than try to find another staff member who has both the niche skill you want and the ability in a new language.
The point is, by acquiring staff that have both new language skills and training in your business area, you could create a combination that can really help you win overseas if no one else has ever quite combined those particular areas together in that way before.
Versatility in Business is Always Winning
Another important thing to consider when you’re thinking about getting extra language training is diversifying your business interests. These days the market is so prone to chaotic fluctuations; it’s not a good idea to rely on any single approach for making money.
By adding your business into new markets in other countries through means of opening a new branch, for example, you could ensure that it’s that much harder for your business to all fail.
It’s also always a good idea to continually expand into emerging markets when you can since this will increase the skills of everyone in your organization. It will also necessarily increase the networking power of your organization across the whole world as you increase the areas where your company has influence, and the people that your company is in contact with all over the world.
It’s not really a good idea to be stuck in only one corner of the world, because who knows what business opportunities you might miss out on by staying put where you are. If you get your staff to increase their language skills, this will increase who you can do business with and will open doors that you never thought possible before in ways that would be hard to even predict otherwise.
All it takes is a few language courses for deserving and capable employees.