People say that business is all about relationships, but the truth is that business is really all about communication. Communication is key to virtually every aspect of business—from acquiring and retaining customers to improving employee engagement and performance. At the most fundamental level, business can’t happen without communication. This is even more true in the era of globalization.
As geographic borders become porous and the world flattens, effective communication with customers, employees, partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders across the globe becomes essential to successfully running a company. A simplistic approach to this issue (and one adopted by some less progressive companies) is to assume that everyone will speak English, including all potential customers and employees. Yet given the accelerating pace of globalization, and the rising influence of many non-English-speaking countries, the flaws in this thinking start to show.
This Rosetta Stone white paper, available for download here, discusses how investing in employee language-training programs can improve employee productivity and business performance across five key business areas, referred to as the “Five Pillars of Business Optimization.”