Keeping Pace With the Global Marketplace
By Cari McLean

As the population of the United States continues to become more diverse, language barriers are becoming walls that must be torn down to ensure success. U.S. companies are growing increasingly aware that in order to thrive in today’s global marketplace, it is not only important to supply and serve a more ethnically diverse population of consumers, but to possess a culturally diverse workforce as well. However, history proves that this is not as easy as it may sound. For example, the Dairy Association’s huge success with the marketing campaign, “Got Milk?” prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico, but it was soon brought to their attention that the Spanish translation read, “Are you lactating?”

Such mistakes are extremely costly for an organization, but when executed accurately, these ventures can be extremely profitable. According to Martha Elena Galindo, president and CEO of Galindo Publicidad Inc., a language translation company that specializes in business-related materials, corporate America has generally been lagging behind in effectively accommodating and integrating its foreign-born workforces. Europe has historically had bilingual and trilingual employees because they understand the demand in the marketplace. The fact is that as more and more U.S. companies employ foreign-born people and explore overseas development, the one-size-fits-all admin process will have to be revamped.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there were approximately 21.4 million foreign-born employees in the U.S. labor force in 2004. In addition, from 2002 to 2004, the number of foreign-born labor force participants grew by about 1.2 million on net and accounted for a little less then half of the total labor force growth over the same period.

“It is time companies identify why they didn’t do well in a market or why they haven’t explored it. These are the questions that companies need to solve in order to integrate non-native employees and open facilities overseas. They need to be more in touch with the market,” Galindo said. “In order to really make the entire workforce and the leaders of a company aware, you need to bring that culture to them through experience, visual presentations, actual visits and incorporate it in the everyday workings somehow.”

In fact, it is imperative that U.S companies budget for and implement a multifaceted process not only to incorporate a culturally diverse workforce, but to educate the native workforce as well. “Depending on the size and scope of the business, computer technology may play a big role in leveling the playing field for many of the company subsidiaries and their employees. It is a process of dialogue, it affects many ends—from the writing of a manual that contemplates the expansion rate of a foreign language to deciding the metric conversion of a table,” Galindo said. “It is an issue of setting the ground rules for good communication, rapport, for morale, for better sales and profits.”

Before a company jumps into another market or decides to open a facility overseas, it is important to conduct local background research for each market and every culture it plans to target. Involving the entire workforce in the learning process is vital because knowledgeable and aware employees are engaged employees—not to mention that the fact someone at the executive, management or supporting workforce levels may already have experience within the particular culture the company is targeting.

Because this process is not easy, it is vital that the lines of communication are open and that the HR department is equipped with a strong leader to help integrate and accommodate the new diverse workers. Galindo said that the ideal assimilation process should be circular. It should include a mobile and connected workforce that is able to communicate in any language in order to effectively establish and complete set business goals and objectives. “You need the right ingredients in the pot at the right time and in adequate amounts. If you bring a foreign language director to the table once you had the English version already printed, it may be too late,” she said. “All the ingredients need to be lined up in such a way that they are added at the right time, so the juices remain and no flavor is lost.”

Galindo often compares the process of integration to cooking, because a company should try to ensure that the employees retain their culture-specific values and customs (the flavor of their background). “There is a mutual, interactive global learning process where the company learns and adapts procedures from one place or one market and implements them in other locations,” Galindo said. “Not everything flows from a corporate office or a central marketing unit. The interaction is much richer, and that increases a more culturally fluent set of standards throughout a multicultural competent organization.”

A global organization should not only operate globally externally, but internally as well. “If a company can provide an environment where foreign-born and native-born employees can learn and grow from each other, the company can in turn have increased revenue, shorter production cycles, creative and entrepreneurial workforces, motivated employees, improved morale, increased safety, etc.,” Galindo said.

According to Galindo, it will also become increasingly important for HR executives and corporate leaders to be bilingual, if not trilingual. “Bilingualism, biculturalism/multiculturalism brings an extra set of abilities and skills to the table that allows for the understanding, adaptation and processing of overall company goals,” she said. “Employees in any department that care about learning and exposure to multicultural events, fairs, countries and languages should be rewarded accordingly.”

Serious market research needs to be executed continually because the marketplace will persist to grow globally. “Markets are always the indicators of what society wants and needs. The language of the welcome mat of companies and businesses 10 years from now will not be monolingual anymore,” Galindo said. “This is one of those things that needed to be started yesterday. Corporate America cannot wait for school districts and states to change laws and recognize these needs.”

Reprinted from Workforce Performance Solutions magazine, Mediatec Publishing