This post is an adapted excerpt from my new book, Localizing Employee Communications: A Handbook (Content Wrangler/XML Press, 2020).
Many companies rely on English as their corporate language. But is it really working?
Whenever I’ve seen measures of engagement with digital corporate channels, employees outside the home office aren’t paying those channels much attention (to put it mildly).
It’s not the language barrier
It’s not a matter of comprehension. People in global companies were hired – at least in part – based on their mastery of English. Routine business communications that cross language borders, conference calls, and almost all company content is in English.
Yet despite their fluency, employees aren’t taking in the corporate message.
In many parts of your company, people’s day-to-day language – even with customers – is in their native language. In those countries, employees understand English, but content in that language flags itself as something distant and alien, something that doesn’t require their immediate attention.
Larger markets may get an occasional translation, but employees in smaller countries may never see corporate content in their native language. As a result, they develop an especially detached attitude towards anything from the corporate office.
Corporate communications writes about subjects that should be important to employees, but it arrives to many of them in a foreign language. If corporate wants their attention, they have to find ways to tap into employees’ instinctive reflexes, not just pure intellect.
Your choices in tone reflect culture
The language barrier can’t be the sole explanation. I’ve seen even less engagement with corporate content from the US among employees in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. Despite a shared language, these countries reject corporate messaging in even greater numbers. Those puzzling results tell me two things:
- They see us in corporate communications as wankers
- If you want content to be noticed, it should be properly localized
How can you build teams and processes to localize employee communications? That’s covered in my book, Localizing Employee Communications: A Handbook.
