June 2016
Maximizing and Supporting Diverse Talent
Diversity is a buzzword in today’s workforce. You can hire diversity, but you also have to support it, maximizing the talent of your diverse workforce. This can offer many challenges to the human resources professional. One challenge that is not often taken into consideration is the one that involves spoken communication for workers who are not native speakers of English.Many highly-skilled and valuable employees have difficulty with the pronunciation challenges that American English puts before them. Many sounds in our language do not exist in their native languages, resulting in pronunciations that are unintelligible to the average listener. The idioms, expressions, and acronyms that we use on a daily basis can be incomprehensible to the foreign-born employee. Mastery of English verb tenses is often incomplete and timetables and deadlines can be impacted. Native speakers of English in the workforce can have great difficulty decoding the pronunciation, syllable stress, and rhythms of the English spoken by their foreign-born co-workers and contractors.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Language skills training by skilled professionals can build communication bridges that enable foreign-born employees to rise to their full potential. Vocal communication can be improved 50-60% with a targeted, systematic approach to working on problem sounds, pacing and voice projection. Intensive focus on specific sound issues and verbal presentation skills can bring about significant results in a short period of time. On-site programs we’ve developed (M.A.P.S. More Americanized Pronunciation and Speaking) can be structured to be non-intrusive yet highly effective. Support the communication challenges of your foreign-born employees. We welcome a conversation with you when appropriate.