The Importance of Multi-Lingual Employees

It's not something that many companies have focused on in the past; however, with the rapid growth of global enterprise the need to have bi-lingual and multi-lingual employees as a regular part of your staff has become more apparent than ever. If you were to take a moment to review the employment needs of many businesses in and around Los Angeles, San Antonio and Washington, D.C. you'll find that most employers are giving preference to employees who are capable of speaking Spanish due to the large, primarily Spanish speaking population in and around these major cities.

And Spanish isn't the only language they want you to know.

As English has become the universal language of business many companies have gotten excessively comfortable, relying on their associates' grasp of the English language and the occasional services of a professional interpreter to do business when dealing with firms overseas. There's only one problem; where a language gap exists there are bound to misunderstandings, and while interpreters are very, very good at what they do they'll never be able to embellish their points in a way that manages to succinctly explain the point they're trying to make while simultaneous bridging the gap between two cultures the way a native born or extremely fluent speaker can.

It's the culture gap, more often than a language barrier, that presents a problem when doing business on a global basis. The practice of bringing in native managers and employees rather than importing their own has become a common practice in the business world, and whether you're choosing to establish your own foreign office or simply doing business across the blue you want to have your fingers on the pulse of those cultural differences-and if that pulse happens to be sitting in your office day in and day out you'll probably find that you have no problem bridging the cultural gap the next time you decide to do business.