Author: Stephen Dolainski

American business and industry have been sounding the alarm for years: The country’s young people are leaving high school and college distressingly ill-prepared with even the basic skills they need to become viable new employees. Now, standing at the edge of the millennium, America faces a crisis in the workplace as the gap widens between the inadequate skill level of the nation’s emerging workforce and the higher-skill needs of the changing workplace.

Stories abound about companies interviewing thousands of applicants to find just a qualified few. Not only do the applicants lack basic literacy, computation and communication skills, but they don’t always know enough to show up to work on time or to dress appropriately. Many of them are further handicapped because they don’t know how to learn whatever new skills their jobs may require in the future.

Out of this crisis has emerged the school-to-work educational reform movement. The school-to-work movement operates on the principle that responsibility for making sure young people leave the nation’s high schools adequately prepared for work is shared through a unique hybrid partnership of educational, social and business interests. The goal of these partnerships is to ensure the nation’s young people learn what they need while in school to successfully make the transition from the classroom to the workplace and are able to be “lifelong learners.”

The school-to-work movement encompasses both integrating work-related skills into the classroom through school reform and teacher training, and giving students real working experiences through internships, apprenticeships and mentor relationships. Research is yet to determine the most effective combination of these school-to-work strategies. But the consensus, at least among business leaders, seems to be that if American employers want to be assured of an adequately trained workforce from which to pull the next generation of employees, they’re going to have to embrace the school-to-work concept and hang in for the long haul. If that sounds tough, the alternative is harsher: A workforce that lacks basic reading, writing, communication and analytical skills means American business is less flexible and therefore less competitive. The spiral of ill effects descends from there: unhappy employees who can’t keep up with a fast-changing workplace and can’t move ahead, higher turnover, an economy that can’t grow, fewer jobs and on and on.

HR has an important role to play in the school-to-work movement, and it’s not just an advocacy role. HR should be actively involved in developing school-to-work programs, as well as personally involved by speaking to student and teacher groups in the community, letting teachers “job shadow” them, and sitting on school-to-work advisory boards.

The time is right for school-to-work initiatives.
Can school-to-work programs really bridge the gap when other attempts seem to have failed? Most experts say yes but that it’s going to take time, maybe 15 or 20 years. J. D. Hoye, director of the School-to-Work Opportunities Office in Washington, D.C., thinks that with patience, broad support and greater employer involvement, the gap is bridgeable. “The goal for us is to offer opportunities for all students and to have all employers participate. I think that’s realistic. But the important piece is that we as a country have both the will behind it and the patience. We traditionally expect instant results, but this isn’t a short-term agenda. This is a long-term agenda that grows and improves as it goes.”

School-to-work programs have been growing, albeit slowly, say some researchers. In 1994, to provide incentive for such programs, President Bill Clinton signed the School to Work Opportunities Act, which provides seed money to foster partnerships of school staff, business leaders, labor representatives and parents for the development of school-to-work transition programs. Since the president signed the legislation in 1994, just over $500 million in developmental and implementation grants has been awarded to 37 states, with some 1,800 schools, 135,000 employers and 500,000 students involved in programs nationwide. But, two years after the legislation, Public/Private Ventures (P/PV), a social policy research organization in Philadelphia, issued the “School to Work or School to What?” report, which examined the employer-involvement side of the equation. The report concluded that employer involvement is weak and many employers know little about school-to-work programs in general and work-based learning in particular. Moreover, the report warned, “If employers cannot be engaged effectively, then school-to-work reforms will be of only limited benefit…. “

In many ways, the American business and educational communities are intimate strangers. Employers have sat on educational advisory boards for years, frequently encouraged to do no more than rubber stamp the educators’ agenda. Schools, edgy, perhaps, that big business will try to stick its nose in the classroom and run the whole show, often solicit the patronage of business, but not its partnership.

Running the whole show is, in fact, the last thing business people want to do. Instead, people in the business world see their role as helping schools reevaluate their mission and determine who their customers are — which, of course, is the community. And that includes business.

Peter Butler, an engineering manager and former trainer for Procter & Gamble’s Mehoopany, Pennsylvania, manufacturing plant, sees the American education system in a position similar to that which American business was in years ago. “Business and industry in America 15 years ago realized we needed to get on board with [the concept of] total quality, which is really nothing more than talking to your customers, finding out what they want and delivering it. Educators are at the beginning of that process…. “

What does making schools accountable for total quality look like? Traditionally, high schools have largely tracked students into college-bound and noncollege-bound tracks. But today, say school-to-work supporters, this long-held belief that school should only prepare students for college is at odds with the facts: According to Richard Kazis, vice president of policy and research for the Boston-based policy and research organization Jobs for the Future, only 24 percent of incoming college freshman actually complete a four-year degree. That figure matches up with the percentage of the labor force that’s labeled “professional” — about 20 percent, a level that has remained unchanged for the last 50 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. What doesn’t match up, however, is the percentage of jobs that require “technically skilled” labor: 65 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a figure that has more than tripled since its 1950 level of 20 percent. That means the largest number of jobs require more than a high-school education, but less than a four-year degree.

The school-to-work movement hopes to realign school with reality. Under this model, career orientation would be presented to all students, eventually as early as kindergarten and elementary grades. Says Lynne Porter, coordinator of curriculum and instructional support at the North Orange County Regional Occupational Center in Anaheim, California, which provides pre-employment training, skills upgrading or retraining and career-preparation classes: “There have always been programs for bright kids and the ones with special needs. School-to-[work] is for all kids… [because] a real school-to-work program… starts giving students real-life skills in a way that simulates the real world.”

According to Norena Badway, a small-business owner in Stockton, California, and a researcher with the National Center for Research in Vocational Education at the University of California, Berkeley, “All the tools exist for us to make the change; however, accountability is the only thing that will drive the change. And accountability and schools are in two different worlds. The business community is the only place that can demand accountability. That’s how business can become usefully involved in the school-to-work movement.”

Businesses benefit by involvement.
Kazis agrees businesses must begin partnering with schools but advises against looking at school-to-work programs as a quick fix for businesses’ woes or schools’ complex problems. “Education reform takes a long time. [Accomplishing change in] schools is difficult at best, and in many cases you’re in school systems in which the capacity has been so weakened over time that the idea of innovation is really difficult to imagine, never mind to move forward.”

But some schools are proving change can happen — and with great results. Schools that have embraced school-to-work strategies such as the school-within-a-school approach of a career academy, which integrates academic and vocational curricula and includes career and technical applications within the field in classroom instruction, have been effective in raising retention rates by up to 70 percent in schools with high dropout figures. Not only do these programs keep kids in school long enough to learn the skills they need, they nurture students’ intellectual and career development and present them with a clearer understanding of the pathways or transitions to the next step in their young lives after graduation from high school: work, for which they have already acquired some skills, or continuing their education.

That’s good news for employers. An adequately prepared and satisfied workforce means less money and less time training new employees in skills they should’ve learned in school. Butler recognized this benefit when he was first introduced to the school-to-work movement at an industrial conference several years ago. “The folks [who arranged the conference] brought along a student from Williamsport [Pennsylvania], who had been in a youth apprenticeship program as a machinist at an aircraft engine manufacturing company for a couple of years. I came away impressed that a kid who had been going nowhere in ninth grade, not doing much academically, had turned around by the time he was a senior. He was a star by anybody’s standards, academically and in terms of the results he was getting as a person. It looked to me like they were doing something right,” says Butler, who now serves on the school-to-work advisory board for the National Alliance of Business (NAB).

The potential value to Procter & Gamble of school-to-work programs “leaped out” at Butler, who had been the site’s training manager before he was engineering manager. (The Mehoopany plant employs 3,000 people and produces Bounty paper towels, Charmin toilet paper, and Pampers and Luvs diapers.) “The connection I made — and I’d been looking at this problem as a training manager — was that the average hiring age was around 30 [because younger candidates don’t do well on skill and aptitude tests and don’t have the maturity and attributes the company is looking for in a team-based environment]. If I could get a person ready to come to work here at age 18 or 20, I’m going to add 10 years on a career… right there.

“I came back from the conference, sat down, and drafted a memo outlining my points [supporting] why we should get involved,” says Butler. One of the points Butler made in his memo was that by bringing in qualified new employees at age 18 or 20, he could cut his training costs by one-third. Butler estimates that Procter & Gamble spends $100,000 in money and resources to develop a technician over 10 years of his or her career. On a given day, says Butler, “probably 300 to 400 people [at the Mehoopany plant] are tied up in training. Annually, $15 million to $20 million has been going into training and developing the workforce. We have roughly the equivalent of 70 full-time people providing training.”

Procter & Gamble gave Butler the go-ahead to start with three paid apprentice slots; now there are 18. Eighteen apprentices don’t begin to meet Procter & Gamble’s hiring needs, but it’s a place to start, says Butler.

John Nelson, CEO of Norwest Bank Colorado, agrees that internship, mentoring and apprenticeship programs such as Procter & Gamble’s are a positive first step in fostering a relationship between schools and business to build the skills of the future workforce. Norwest Bank, with 86 sites statewide, offers student internships, job shadowing and mentoring at many of them. Nelson — who’s a business spokesperson for the Colorado School-to-Career Partnership, a statewide initiative — says he believes that programs like these will have a positive effect on the bank’s future because “there’s no better way to ensure the success of a business than to have highly productive, skilled employees… with a strong academic background, knowledge about the work environment and work skills.”

Such programs already are paying off for The Segal Co., a New York City-based employee-benefits, human resources and actuarial consulting firm. Last year the company hired a young woman who had been mentored as a high school student by a Segal employee and then trained as an intern. Sheila Donath, a company vice president, coordinates Segal’s mentoring and tutoring program with a local high school under the city’s School Partnership Program. Donath has recruited 27 volunteers from the executive and staff ranks to tutor the high school students in math and reading, and to mentor others who need help with their studies or guidance about college choices. Donath says that besides “providing a community service… we’re helping to build the future workforce.”

Although it’s easy to see how individual businesses such as The Segal Co. already have benefited from school-to-work programs, it’s too early in the game to gauge what kind of impact the school-to-work movement has had on the success of businesses in general. But the individual successes suggest that school-to-work partnerships may offer realistic solutions because they tackle one of the main reasons so many young people leave school ill-prepared to take jobs or continue on to specialized training: School seems irrelevant, unimportant and boring for most kids who aren’t college-bound or in need of special education.

Teachers can be businesses’ best advocate.
Just as students need to see the relevancy of school to their future in the working world, so do their teachers. Most teachers, unfortunately, don’t know that much about the world of work outside their walls, says Paul Hasney, vice president of corporate education for Hibernia Bank in New Orleans who also is a former high school teacher.

To educate teachers about other work environments, Hibernia joined a consortium of financial institutions in 1995 that was being formed to act as an advisory group to help set up financial services academies at five New Orleans public high schools. Then, Hibernia, which employs 4,000 people statewide in Louisiana, set up weeklong workplace-orientation sessions during the summers of 1995 and 1996 for 40 high school teachers. The teachers were paid to attend seminars in the morning and engage in job-shadowing or other work-related activity in the afternoon. Hasney says the sessions were successful in giving teachers insight as to how what they teach in the classroom is relevant to the workplace, but that there was too much lag time between the summer sessions and the start of the school year in September. This year, a different approach will be tried. Once a month, teams of academy teachers will leave school for a day of work at the bank, a brokerage firm, an insurance company, or one of the other business partners in the consortium.

At the corporate headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, Claire’s Stores, a women’s accessories retailer, has set up mentoring and job-shadowing for teachers from grade level to junior college, explains Tina Perkins, the retailer’s human resources manager. It’s a way of getting the message out about the different kinds of jobs available in the retail industry, says Perkins, who’s also on the school-to-work advisory board of the NAB.

Teacher-orientation sessions also end up promoting new-found respect among educators and employers. Getting educators and business people to respect one another and work together is key. As someone who has attended many advisory board and other meetings between educators and business people, businesswoman Badway observes that “educators don’t feel they’re highly regarded by business people and business people don’t feel they’re highly regarded by educators. There are enormous misperceptions, but when teachers and business people work together and start progressing on something, it’s like handing out candy in the middle of the meeting.”

For employers, at least, the real prize will come when, somewhere down the road, a new crop of graduates reports to work with the skills and attitudes necessary to make them successful, productive employees. That will be the time to hand out the candy.

Workforce, May 1997, Vol. 76, No. 5, pp. 28-37.

School-to-work strategies are a long-term process. With no more than a small, immediate payoff toward the balance sheet, it can be difficult for the human resources department to justify the costs of starting a school-to-work program. Fortunately, although there’s always a start-up cost for a new venture, getting involved in a local school-to-work program doesn’t have to cost a fortune in either financial or human resources. For one, the School-to-Work Opportunities Act provides venture capital to get school-to-work partnerships off the ground or to expand those that have been started.

Secondly, direct costs of these programs for employers can be minimal, including just apprentices’ wages, tools or equipment. But indirectly, time spent, of course, is money as well, especially for small firms. (And according to the Washington, D.C.-based National Alliance of Business, companies with fewer than 100 employees make up the bulk of employers providing youth apprenticeship opportunities.) HR managers give of their time when they sit on school-to-work planning committees, negotiating program details and policies. Technical workers may spend time advising classroom teachers on curricula, and front-line workers who may act as mentors for apprentices are spending time away from their primary job responsibilities.

Lynne Porter, coordinator of curriculum and instructional support for North Orange County Regional Occupation Center in Anaheim, California, recognizes the limits of time and resources some employers face. When recruiting business partners, she asks employers to identify their own “comfort level of involvement,” perhaps as a mentor or as a speaker by offering worksite tours to students. She believes that when a person, on behalf of the company, sets his or her own level of involvement, he or she also is declaring that his or her involvement is valuable and meaningful to the employer.

Sheila Donath, a company vice president for New York City-based The Segal Co., asks her volunteers to commit to a minimum of only four hours a month to work with students. However, Donath and the tutors and mentors usually devote more time each month because they also organize group activities with the students like skating parties, museum visits and picnics. This year, 17 students are being mentored by Segal employees. Donath hopes to add a workshop for students who want to prepare for the SAT and would like to expand the tutoring program. Segal pays for incidental expenses associated with the program, and employee volunteers make up the work hours used to mentor or tutor students.

At the other end of the spectrum is Siemens AG, a German electrical and electronics systems supplier based in Munich. The corporation’s U.S. operating companies (of which there are seven) spend an estimated $3 million to $4 million a year on school-to-work programs. One of its companies, Siemens Rolm Communications, for example, a private telecommunications supplier in Santa Clara, California, will have spent approximately $250,000 between May 1996 and the end of fiscal year 1997 to train 12 high school seniors in its new Field Technician Youth Internship Program. The program combines workplace learning two afternoons a week for students with paid summer internships and college study after graduation. Siemens will also pay for the students’ college tuition and textbook costs. With the long European tradition of apprenticeships as example, Siemens recognizes that financial commitment to such school-to-work programs pays off down the road.

Every business or industry has its own vocabulary. The school-to-work movement is no different. Here’s a quick run down of some of the school-to-work jargon.

Career Academy (or academy): A “school within a school” model organized around a career cluster. Academic and vocational curricula are integrated, and career and technical applications within the field are included in classroom instruction and structured work experiences.

Curriculum Integration: Workplace application of academic skills (calculating dosage for medication, for example).

Internship: A student works for an employer for a specific period learning about a particular job, industry or occupation. Interns may or may not be compensated.

Job Shadowing: A student (or a teacher) follows an employee at a company location to learn about a particular occupation or industry.

Mentoring: The relationship between an employee and a student for which a mentor advises, instructs and critiques the student’s performance over a period of time.

School-to-career: Another term for school-to-work. “Work” is sometimes perceived as negative in connotation, especially to parents concerned their kids are being tracked into vocational programs instead of academic.

Tech Prep (Technical Preparation Associates Degree): A school-to-school transition linking the last two years of high school with the first two years of community college, allowing students to train for jobs while completing an academic program. Emphasis is generally on science, math and workplace applications.

Work-based Learning: Learning related to work and careers. Job training and work experiences, including workplace mentoring and apprenticeships, aim at developing pre-employment skills.

Youth Apprenticeship: A multiyear program that combines school-based and work-based learning in a specific occupational area. It’s designed to lead directly into a postsecondary program, entry-level job or registered apprenticeship program. Youth apprenticeships may or may not be compensated.

Workforce, May 1997, Vol. 76, No. 5, p. 34.

We all know the image of the ugly American expatriate. It’s the business professional who bulldozes his or her way through another country—speaking only English and making everyone around him or her pull out their English phrase books just to keep up.

Although the ugly American image is yet another stereotype that’s shattered each and every time a U.S. businessperson goes abroad with a good knowledge of the customer’s native language, it’s still an image that’s perpetuated in the expatriate community and in other business circles. But it shouldn’t be. Not knowing the language of the land is a persistent business problem that’s holding many professionals back from reaching optimum performance during their trips abroad.

Although English is widely spoken in the global business world, the language of business, as the adage goes, is the language of the customer. Increasingly, that language may not be English. And as U.S. companies—both big and small—look for new markets outside the major foreign financial centers such as Hong Kong, Paris and Geneva, they’re beginning to realize they can’t get by with just speaking English anymore. International human resources managers, already facing many challenges associated with relocating employees out of the United States, have the added responsibility of providing some form of language training for outbound expats, a task that may not be high on everyone’s priority list.

But it should be—because companies are sending more expats to other countries than ever before, and because a better understanding of a customer’s language can translate directly into profit.

Language training for expats is critical to global business success.
The globalization process has been responsible for large numbers of Americans sent out of the country to expatriate assignments all over the world. An estimate by the New York City-based National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) puts the figure at more than 250,000 on overseas assignments currently. According to the survey “Global Relocation Trends, 1995,” conducted by the global relocation consulting firm Windham International based in New York City and the NFTC, the number of U.S. expats is expected to grow in the future.

Although these U.S.-based expatriates may bring expertise of their particular business or industry with them on assignment, they often only can communicate it in the English language. And as American companies start turning their attention to China, Mexico, Russia, Malaysia and markets outside the big foreign financial centers, something’s surely going to get lost in the translation.

“If Americans spoke other languages the way Norwegians, for example, speak English, we’d take over the world.” So says Jack Keogh, the director of client services for Mayflower International Inc.’s relocation division in Carmel, Indiana. In the global business world, U.S. business professionals—monolingual by and large—are at a disadvantage, relying on bilingual secretaries and interpreters to translate for them.

For example, using interpreters may help U.S. expats understand basic conversations with clients, but it won’t necessarily help them with the nuances of what their customers are trying to discuss. While interpreters are an important business tool, they also can be another barrier to client relationships. “Your interpreter can have a 20-minute conversation with [your client] and you’ll get a four-word answer,” says Carrie Shearer, manager of compensation for Caltex Petroleum, a Dallas-based oil company that recently tutored 300 employees in the Thai language before sending them to Thailand.

More than just words are lost, says Robin Elkins, senior manager of Bennett and Associates Inc., a relocation and cross-cultural consultation firm in Chicago that works with Fortune 500 clients and others. “English may be spoken in the office, in the workplace and in the expatriate community, but it’s not always spoken outside those environments,” says Elkins.

Employees who are about to go on an expatriate assignment must realize when they accept that assignment in another country where English isn’t the norm, that learning the basics of the country’s language should be viewed as a direct part of the assignment—not as a nice add-on skill.

And there’s often more than just business at stake. There’s also the not-so-small matter of the person simply getting around in the location they’re visiting. “If expats can’t interact with the locals in the markets and in the streets, they’re missing a lot about the thinking and character of the local people,” says Elkins. These experiences also influence expats’ ability to assess situations back at work, and they’ll often make wrong assumptions about people they’re managing.

Kevin Murphy, director of international HR for Community Energy Alternatives, Inc., a small Ridgewood, New Jersey-based power producer with 18 expat employees on assignment, says, “Language training is incredibly important. It just makes everything easier.

“In China or Latin America, English isn’t the major language, and you’re at a tremendous disadvantage if you don’t speak the language. So it makes sense to get whoever is going [there] up to speed with the language as soon as possible.” Easier said—in any language—than done. But it’s vitally important to the success of expatriate assignments.

Language training helps global business relationships thrive.
The NFTC estimates that the average one-time cost of an expatriate relocation is $60,000. Corporate language training programs need to contribute to the success of international assignments.

Says Beth Gegner, regional manager in Europe for Blanchard Training & Development Inc., which is based in San Diego, California: “If someone in a foreign country has two vendors, and one speaks the language and the other doesn’t, it’s almost guaranteed that the one who has the language skill has more of a chance to get the account than the one who doesn’t.”

Language skills, says Murphy of Community Energy Alternatives, help build the kind of teamwork needed to succeed overseas. “Once you get into a country, and you don’t have your act together as a team, you’ll find out very quickly that the people in that country will not only steal your lunch, they’ll eat it too. So you’ve got to glue [yourselves] together as a team. Part of that is picking up the language skills.”

Cementing business-related communication may be the primary objective, but it’s not necessarily the only objective. Knowing the language of the land can also help an expat feel less isolated. Shearer felt that language training was especially important when Caltex sent approximately 300 employees to a rural location in Thailand during the initial stages of building a refinery there. Because of the refinery’s remote location, not as many people would speak English as in the capital city, Bangkok.

“You could get by at work without speaking Thai,” says Shearer, “but how are you going to converse with the maid or [with a vendor] when you go to the open-air market? There’s no way to even look at a coin and know what it is, because Thai is based on Sanskrit and doesn’t look [anything] like English.”

The good news for Shearer was that she knew about the project in 1994, 18 months in advance. Caltex, which employs approximately 10,000 people worldwide, only has 250 employees in the United States. Many employees who worked on the Thailand project were Caltex workers from South Africa, Australia and other countries.

“A lot of front-end work was being done in Dallas, so we had eight or nine [people of different] nationalities working in Dallas on this project, which made it easier to organize language training for everybody,” Shearer explains.

In 1994, she contracted Berlitz to give Thai-language classes to the English-speaking employees and their spouses. A refinery can be a dangerous place, so Caltex employees also were taught to understand Thai vocabulary like “danger,” “fire,” “watch out,” words that might be shouted out in an emergency. “When people are under stress, they’re going to speak in their native language [unless trained otherwise],” says Shearer.

Caltex also brought 75 Thai workers to Dallas for technical training before the project commenced. They first were given a six-week, live-in immersion course in English. All together, Caltex ran 30 weeks of training.

Caltex has since decided to set up English-language training in Thailand for workers before they’re brought to Dallas for technical training. Knowing what the need is ahead of time helps employees, their managers and HR to plan on which language training program method is best for a given situation.

Typically, before any language training takes place, the expat’s personal and professional readiness for the assignment is assessed. But expats aren’t the only ones who can benefit from language training. Gegner thinks there’s also value in a company training all its employees “on a minimal level” in the language of the foreign companies it does business with. “If delegates visit the United States, they’re going to feel much more at home if [workers] here could just say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ to them.”

Helping inbound foreign national employees improve their English skills is another objective of companies like St. Paul, Minnesota-based 3M Co. and Caltex. Most of 3M’s tutors are assigned to work with inbound workers already familiar with English but who want “to improve their English skills so they can be more productive on the job in St. Paul,” says Margaret Beaubien, 3M’s language services administrator.

Tutors are usually employees’ spouses, an advantage for inbound workers, says Beaubien, because “our tutors have a knowledge of how 3M works and can field questions from the foreign-service workers… and we’re providing a lot more than language instruction.”

The immersion approach usually works best.
Although tutors, classes and other methods are available sources of language training, perhaps the best place to learn a language is in it’s homeland, called “total immersion.” Because this may not always be a practical option, the next best thing is a simulated immersion program—an environment in which only the target language is spoken and the student is exposed to different accents, three-way conversations, telephone role-playing, and other clearly defined social and business situations. An intensive program like this, which can cost several thousand dollars, might comprise a predeparture three-day crash course emphasizing business and courtesy communication. For the expat who has time, the immersion approach could be the way to go.

Berlitz, based in Princeton, New Jersey, is well-known for its immersion programs. International relocation and cross-cultural consulting firms like Bennett and Associates also offer highly personalized immersion preparation that’s tailored to the expat’s international assignment.

Ideally, training can continue once the expat is at his or her destination. Bennett and Associates uses its worldwide network of resources to locate qualified tutors. Berlitz operates more than 320 language centers worldwide. According to Michael Palm, Berlitz’s North American marketing manager, curriculum, texts and instructional methods are universal (the centers aren’t franchised), offering what might be called a seamless advantage: An expat can begin studying Japanese, for example, at a Berlitz center in America and then once the expat is in the assigned country, he or she can pick it up again on the same page.

Intensive predeparture training, like immersion instruction, however, may not meet a company’s needs. Kathy Hoffman, director of international human resources of the Norwalk, Connecticut-based ABB, recalls, “About five years ago, we tried some intensive courses, but reports back from the individuals said they found it better to get trained when they were actually overseas.” She agrees that it may be more motivating when you’re in the environment and can practice daily, than if you’re sitting in a classroom trying to pick up a language. ABB, the U.S. arm of a global engineering group, sends approximately 200 people all over the world each year, most of whom are project workers who don’t generally receive language training. Approximately 70 ABB employees, mostly management-level employees, receive foreign-language training once they’re in the country, says Hoffman.

But who has time?
Many expatriates who are preparing for an international assignment, however, have little or no time for lengthy, intensive language training. That’s when HR managers have to intervene with other tactics.

John Freivalds, managing director of JFA, an international public relations firm in Minneapolis, thinks he has a solution: guerrilla linguistics—learning several carefully chosen words and phrases, targeted to a country’s business culture, that an expat can speak at the appropriate moment to impress locals that he or she knows more about a language and culture than he or she really does.

Although guerrilla linguistics may bring momentary success, the tactic is only temporary and probably works best for someone who has much global experience and speaks several languages.

Self-instructional materials such as audio tapes provide a practical alternative to tutors, classroom study and guerrilla linguistics, according to Jeffrey Norton, president of Guilford, Connecticut-based Jeffrey Norton Publishers Inc., one of the country’s largest producers of self-instructional language courses. Learning a language in the in-between moments (between meetings or at lunch) or during off-hours, can be better for many busy soon-to-be expatriates than scheduled classes.

Typically, an HR person is the primary impetus behind employees using self-instructional tapes, Norton notes, and adds that inquiries about such tapes have increased in the last three years. It figures that even if soon-to-be expats can’t schedule large blocks of time to learn a new language, they probably can find snippets of time here and there to learn a language.

But beyond these language training methods, there’s another longer-term approach and philosophy that companies can adopt for language acquisition.

Make language acquisition a company goal.
International human resources professionals might consider making language acquisition more of a global company objective, rather than just a situational tactic.

At 3M’s headquarters, what began 30 years ago as informal, lunch-time get-togethers to practice German, has become a well-loved employee tradition and a unique company asset. It’s called the “Language Society.” In the beginning stages of the society, volunteer teachers were recruited from employee ranks by other employees and classes were formed. Today, at the company’s St. Paul location, the Language Society has about 1,000 members who are current or retired 3M employees or immediate family members. Classes in 17 languages, which are taught by a cadre of 70 volunteer teachers, meet once a week for 45 minutes during lunch. There’s a nominal fee ($5) to join the society, and 3M supplies texts at cost to members.

Participation in Language Society classes has no official connection with employees’ jobs, says Beaubien. Participation is voluntary, and employees are motivated by a variety of personal and professional reasons to study a foreign language.

“We have people who may be working in customer service and who are studying Spanish and they may receive calls from Latin America. They’re better able to field those calls,” says Beaubien. “3M has also opened a homepage on the Internet, and we’re receiving inquiries from all over the world, and, of course, they’re coming in different languages. The society is being contacted to translate those messages.”

Language training at 3M isn’t limited, however, to Language Society classes. Beaubien also manages a tutoring program for outbound and inbound employees, using more than 20 tutors who are either former teachers or hold ESL certification. The decision to receive language tutoring is left up to the individual employee and his or her department manager, says Beaubien.

But not all employees are eager to learn a new language—even if it will benefit them in their jobs.

Motivate expats to know their customers’ languages.
“It’s difficult,” says Brian Connelly about the Spanish classes he’s currently taking twice weekly after work. Connelly is manager of Pan-American operations for Blanchard Training & Development, a position that will require him to travel several times a year to Latin America. “I work 10 to 12 hours a day, and then go to class two times a week, and try to study in between.”

Learning a new language requires time, effort and motivation. With all the responsibilities of an international assignment, it’s difficult to take the extra time necessary to learn a new language. It’s especially hard if language learning must be reserved for unpaid, after-work hours, even if companies reimburse instructional costs (and generally, they do). More than 60 percent of the companies surveyed by Windham International and the NFTC for the “Global Relocation Trends” survey offer cross-cultural orientation to expats (which generally includes a language training component).

And, according to Elkins, about 80 percent of Bennett and Associates’ Fortune 500 clients offer language training. “But,” she says, “not many corporations encourage language fluency. They think they only need enough language to get by, because they’ll have a [bilingual] assistant or secretary or have an interpreter.”

Shearer of Caltex says that motivation is an “individual thing. You can force people to do something, but you can’t force them to learn something.” Caltex didn’t require its outbound employees to learn Thai before going to the remote refinery project, and classes were offered after work. Still, about 85 percent of the employees took the training, with 75 percent completing it. A few people did so well, Shearer arranged private tutoring lessons for them, and Caltex paid for it.

Financial incentive is a tried-and-true motivator, and one that Murphy of Community Energy Alternatives employs. “If you hire a secretary [who knows] stenography, you’ll pay that person a little more for [that] skill. So when a person picks up language skills, I want to be able to give [him or her a reward].” Murphy uses a performance appraisal submitted by the expat’s manager that includes a language-skills evaluation. No matter what language a person speaks, everyone speaks the language of money.

Murphy tries to make it as easy as possible for expats at his firm to pick up language skills. He negotiates to purchase a block of time for the year with an outside vendor to provide onsite language training at his company’s Ridgewood, New Jersey, headquarters. He schedules classes for employees during work hours. Murphy believes in continuing language training in-country, and negotiates that into his contract as well.

This is the type of long-term approach to language training that companies must adopt for future success in global business.

When all is said and done…
As cel phones and the Internet link the Earth’s remotest locations, the world grows a little bit smaller. Ironically, American businesses are realizing just how vast and culturally diverse this planet is—and that most of its inhabitants don’t speak English.

Says 3M’s Beaubien: “It’s becoming critical that companies have employees who not only have studied other languages, but also who have received some cultural training and who understand how we can do business with people who are different, how we can work together as productively as possible. That only happens when you understand another culture and the best way to do that, of course, is through language.”

As for HR professionals’ part: Language training must be an integral part of a company’s expatriate program. It can no longer be viewed as just another accent or add on. Because when your client in Mexico says, “Quiero comprar un contrato de un million,” (I want to buy a million dollar contract), the last thing you want your expat employee to say is, “Huh?”

Workforce, February 1997, Vol. 76, No. 2, pp. 32-39.

Johnna Capitano isn’t planning to go to China, but this spring she took a 12-week class in Mandarin Chinese. Now she can exchange greetings in the dialect, and she knows enough to be careful when she uses the Chinese word ma, which, depending on the intonation, has different meanings, including horse, mummy and mother.

“It was very challenging, because the tones are difficult to master,” says Capitano, a Los Angeles (LA)-based human resources development consultant for ARCO Products Co., the downstream refinery and marketing arm of ARCO. “At times it was very frustrating, not being able to pronounce a word the way the instructor kept repeating it.”

But Capitano stuck with it and was one of 10 employees who completed a pilot class in conversational Mandarin Chinese that the company conducted this spring. Twice-weekly classes, which met for 1 1/2 hours at a time, were held at ARCO Products Co.’s two sites in Los Angeles and in Anaheim, California. The company is exploring potential business opportunities in China and has already hosted Chinese delegations on tours of its LA refinery. Capitano will probably be involved in hosting future delegations.

Paula Johnston, ARCO Products’ human resources consultant for international projects, set up the pilot language training in response to employees’ requests. “Members of our technical team who had been to China to analyze business opportunities found it was difficult to communicate because everything was done through interpreters. We’ve also had several Chinese delegations visit ARCO, and did everything via interpreters. We thought since we’re just looking at opportunities now, why not use the time appropriately and offer Mandarin classes before things heat up?”

Johnston requested bids from three vendors: a university, a consulting firm on the East Coast and Berlitz. Berlitz was selected, Johnston says, “not only on the basis of economics, but [also because] it offers a great deal of flexibility. It’s a firm we could utilize not only at the beginning level, but also later for a total immersion program if somebody was actually selected for an assignment, and even in China for follow-up training. [The company offered] continuity and consistency.”

Johnston set up classes during work hours at the company’s LA refinery site, where Capitano took the class. She also set up a class at the firm’s engineering and technology facility in Anaheim so employees wouldn’t have to travel. About 28 employees began the classes, but enrollment ultimately dwindled to about 10.

“It was very tough, because some people’s schedules were just too busy or they were placed on special projects,” explains Johnston. “Some people probably couldn’t keep up or just lost interest.”

Capitano agrees. “People would get tied up in other projects, and it was difficult to pull away and say, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go to my Mandarin class now.’ Employees—and the company—all have to make language acquisition a priority.

“A language isn’t easy to learn, especially when it’s so different, like Mandarin. It really has to become a work priority that everyone understands,” says Capitano.

Johnston is in the process of seeking feedback. Although her impressions, so far, are good, she doesn’t want to overplay it. Why? “Because we did lose people for a variety of reasons,” she says. Of the people who completed the program, the response, she reports, is “pretty enthusiastic.” Although the reports are mixed, learning their customers’ language can never be a futile endeavor. Because language training at ARCO hasn’t been an afterthought, the wheels of global business are spinning with greater efficiency.

Workforce, February 1997, Vol. 76, No. 2, p. 38.

If language training is an investment in the success of the expatriate on international assignment, then how much does a good investment cost? That, of course, depends on what kind of training is used, who provides it, where it takes place, how long it goes on and how many employees are participating. Here are a few examples of costs for language training, self-instruction, translation and interpretation:

• Ten-day immersion program for one individual, including all materials (any language): $4,500.

• Guerrilla linguistics—a written phonetic list of 30 to 40 key terms and phrases: $500-$1,000.

• Two-part, self-instructional, beginning Japanese course of 24 cassette tapes (30 hours) and two texts: $430.

• One hour of interpreting time (any language): $325.

• Twelve-week (48 hours), university extension, intermediate Spanish conversation class: $280.

• Three-part “executive” Japanese self-instructional course of six cassette tapes (5 1/2 hours) and three texts: $225.

• “Russian for business” self-instructional program of three cassette tapes (three hours) and phrase book: $65.

• Document translation: About $.25 per word for translations to or from French, Italian, German or Spanish (FIGS); more for other languages.

Workforce, February 1997, Vol. 76, No. 2, p. 39.