Workforce Language Services

In the online edition of Human Resource Executives, author Michael Felton-O’Brien offers a comprehensive overview of the benefits and drawbacks of occupational Spanish classes across varied industries.

Some benefits to managers’ learning Spanish:

Companies that lack bilingual managers can also miss out on potentially valuable feedback and ideas from workers, ranging from ways that a certain task could be performed more efficiently to ideas for improving safety, she says.

When employers make the effort to help their managers communicate in Spanish or another language, Baron says, it makes a positive difference with employees. “It will make them feel more comfortable going to the supervisor and asking questions and it will increase rapport, which almost everyone believes leads to a safer workplace.”

But the article also notes that in some situations and industries, employees’ limited knowledge of Spanish can be more helpful than harmful:

But, he says, the life-or-death situations that police officers, firefighters and health-care workers encounter on a daily basis may prove more troublesome.

“[Occupational Spanish classes] can actually be worse than nothing in those situations, because people think they know something when they actually don’t,” says Uyehara. “There have been stories in health care and law-enforcement settings where basic misunderstandings occur and people are given the wrong medical treatment with horrendous results. All kinds of bad things can happen if the information isn’t translated correctly.

Looking at both the benefits and potential drawbacks involved suggests that a two-pronged approach would be wise: increasing managers’ capacity for communicating in the language of their personnel while ensuring that qualified interpreters are available for certain situations and in certain industries. 

To read the complete article, click here.