What are the reasons to organize language classes?

The International community

If your company works in the international arena, is looking to expand into emerging markets, or operates within a community where a significant portion of the population speaks a language other than English, it’s clear that your business has the potential to benefit from offering employee language training programs.  Having employees who feel comfortable conducting business in a critical language for your industry (French, English, Dutch, Spannish…) can create new opportunities in diverse markets and help communicate your message to desired client segments.

The knowledge of mother tongue.

Learning a second language can also develop mother tongue skills. Generally, not much attention is paid to the grammatical structures of our native tongue, but once we start to focus on the mechanics of a second language: grammar, conjugations and sentence structure, our awareness of our L1 improves. These transferable skills give bilingual students a greater insight into their mother tongue, thus making them more effective communicators as well as better writers.

Mindset and Team-building

Employees who feel that their personal and professional growth are valued often have a strong sense of loyalty to their company, and tend to engage more productively with their work. Beyond opening up opportunities for your business to expand into new markets and client segments, offering foreign language training benefits can promote team bonding and raise employee satisfaction. And as your company culture is strengthened, you’ll also be drawing candidates with a global mindset into your hiring pool, solidifying an organizational vision for high-level international and multicultural engagement.

The company reputation

Offering this opportunity to your employees is also a way to maintain your company reputation. It means indeed that you take care of your employees and that their personal development is important for you.

And else…

What further arguments to convince you ?  An article published in The Telegraph shows that learning a foreign language improves memory and rational policy-making, helps to put issues into perspective and make people more clever !