Three reasons for businesses to invest in languages
A growing part of any well-rounded workforce is the ability to speak multiple languages.
Not only does it allow an organisation to expand their reach outside of their home market, it also gives them the chance to get exposure to another way of life.
There are a range of benefits to learning another language that run outside of the corporate sphere – including improved productivity, memory and creativity – making it a positive influence on those who make up the lifeblood of your organisation: your workforce.
The internet has made other regions so much more accessible and the right language skills give businesses the tools to take advantage of it.
In this piece, we’ve outlined some of the most important reasons why businesses should invest in another language.
Grow your connections
“It isn’t about what you know; it’s about who you know.”
There’s truth in that old adage. Being able to speak another language gives you the chance to make connections you otherwise would not be able to.
Having the ability to converse with people from different parts of the world allows you to bounce ideas off of someone new and gives you critical insights into an entirely different way of living and thinking.
You never know, a new connection may well provide you with the opportunity to forge a relationship that catapults your business into a whole other stratosphere: whether that’s a new customer, an important middle man or merely someone with a transformative idea for your organisation.
Reach more customers
For businesses, the most obvious advantage of being proficient in another language is to reach more customers. In an increasingly globalised market, those with the ability to speak another language accurately are more likely to see success overseas.
Patchy linguistic skills can only get you so far. Fluency in another tongue gives you complete confidence in your campaign.
Having an understanding of another culture also allows you to avoid any embarrassing mistakes that would derail the success of any marketing campaign in an unfamiliar region.
Ultimately, having access to another source of potential customers is a tremendous positive for any business. If you have the language skills to capitalise on this opportunity, it gives you the ability to outperform your competitors and grow your business.
Improves employee performance
Because it forces you to use a part of the brain you wouldn’t ordinarily, learning another language has a host of benefits for the individual. This is called:
Foremost amongst those benefits is improved memory. Improving your recall gives you the capacity to store more and more information away, which is going to bolster your overall performance at work.
There have also been links to greater creativity, increased productivity and an improved ability to multi-task.
Learning another language has been proven to help delay the onset of diseases like Alzheimer’s. Those that regularly interacted in a language other than their own were able to offset the disease by a number of years when compared to those who didn’t.
