Businesses can experience an increase in lost business opportunities by 32% when customer-facing employees do not possess the necessary business English communication skills.
With one in every four people speaking English, it is no surprise that English has become a universally accepted and used language. Several South Asian, South East Asian, and Middle Eastern countries including India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan, etc. have at least 50% of the workforce using business-level English on the job.
It is essential for employees, especially those required to possess customer-facing role-based skills, to be well-versed with business-level English communication. However, that is not the case yet, and not having employees speak a universally accepted form of communication can have its cons.
For starters, not being proficient in the English language can heavily cost an organization in terms of time, resources, and effort. Let’s understand how:
- Missing Out on International Opportunities
Working at a global level is a milestone for any and every organization. However, a lower degree of proficiency in business English can result in missed opportunities at an international level. From compliance concerns and increased risks due to misunderstandings in communication; to poor customer satisfaction and a resulting negative brand image - anything can hinder international growth for an organization.
- Misunderstood Communication Leading to Increased Compliance and Other Risks
The inability to communicate in a common language can increase the risk of misunderstandings, which in turn can lead to delays in delivery, or even worse, scrapping of existing work only to start from scratch - or worse, the loss of a business account entirely. English language barriers can cause a lot of wastage in terms of time and effort. Not to mention, the additional cost of replacing a mis-hire.
For instance, an inability to understand briefings and specifications in a technology environment can result in incorrect coding, wrong product delivery, misunderstandings over work culture, and disagreements leading to an overall drop in morale. Even something as insignificant as incorrect email etiquette can be a huge bottleneck in customer-facing roles and client-facing roles.
Additionally, organizations involved in cross border trading are required to adhere to specific compliance requirements. Unless the requirements are communicated clearly, there is a high risk of compliance violations. Ineffective business English communication can become a huge barrier for both customer-facing teams in such a case and the inability to keep up with compliance requirements can place both parties at huge risk.
- Poor Customer Satisfaction
For any organization, the end goal for client facing communication is to deliver clarity through their interaction and ensure superior customer experience.. Imagine the degree of customer dissatisfaction if their concerns are misunderstood and responses are not well articulated in English.
For technology and consulting services that help large organizations run massive projects, customer dissatisfaction can lead to immediate project cancellations that could be a factor in mass layoffs, stunted career growth, etc.
It is only natural that an organization that leaves customers majorly dissatisfied and has a reputation for putting other parties at risk will develop a negative brand image in the market further escalating losses.
But company losses are not the only aspect at risk here.
Talent is the most expensive resource at any organization. Human resources spend thousands of man hours scouting, sorting, onboarding and training eligible resources to represent the organization before other parties. So, what happens when employees, especially those who need to have the required client facing skills, are not a part of the bandwagon that is fluent in business English?
A 2016 study by Cambridge stated that nearly 50% of all survey respondents from countries where English is not a native language said that using business English is significant for their organization. These countries included India (90%), Hong Kong (91%), Indonesia (87%), South Korea (80%), Japan (64%), China (63%), Jordan (91%) and Saudi Arabia (90%).
It might be a hard truth to accept but the English language is more or less spoken universally in the corporate world and not being able to use it well can have a negative impact on customer-facing roles. Let’s understand the possible effects of not being proficient in a customer-facing role skill like
business level English.
- Erosion of Self Confidence
For engineers, unmatched coding and developing skills can be the key to take their careers to greater heights. However, this is true for any job profile. Knowing your product or service or being adept with a process can inherently help a person move forward. But an inability to use business English can shun employees to the back-end, a space that doesn't face the customer. This can quickly erode their self confidence and hinder their ability to train or further develop English skills.
- Job Insecurity
It is a natural instinct for humans to compare their work and worth with others. Watching someone with the same skill set grow much faster than themselves can be nerve wrecking. It leads to job insecurities and an employee might feel they are expendable. Once job insecurity sets in, it will hinder an employee’s performance, change their work attitude and eventually lead to termination or a resignation.
- Performance Suffers
It is possible that the inadequate performance of one employee can lead to an overall decline in the team’s performance. From misunderstandings in communication, not being able to comprehend project briefings to delays in delivery and an inability to maintain expected standards, not being proficient in business English can even become a bottleneck in vertical growth within organizations.
- Demand for Proficiency in English Is Becoming Industry-Agnostic
Customer facing business sectors including technology services, banking, finance, hospitality, healthcare etc are known to require customer-facing role based skills like business-level English .In today’s day and age, customer-facing roles generally require basic English communication skills to understand customer concerns. On the business front, it is important to be well adept with business level English skills as they come in handy, especially where compliance is involved.
Studies show that there is little difference in the English speaking skill gap among small, medium and large scale enterprises with all of them averaging at least 40% skills gap.
The big question is, can this skills gap be bridged?
Yes. It can be bridged.
A skill gap like English speaking skills can be bridged at the candidate selection level. However, it is not as easy as it sounds. For starters, talent acquisition teams generally do not have a way to quantify all four aspects of English language skills i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Additionally, the expense of hiring an English language expert for helping with candidate selection can be time consuming, expensive and could risk selection bias. It will also increase the cost of hiring recruits. Not to mention, the cost can double when recruiters need to replace a bad hire.
Even if there are solutions available to test a candidate’s business English communication skills, there is generally no solution available to combine core job skills with English skills. Let’s give you an example. An English language test might probably test basic English communication skills, however, if a candidate is working in a specific field, say, technology, healthcare or banking and finance, they need to be well adept with the jargon used in the respective fields. Unfortunately, English skill tests do not test at such a micro level.
It also becomes difficult to verify whether a candidate is maintaining their integrity and not resorting to unethical means to pass an English communication test. Of course, this could be possible with a limited number of candidates, but when testing over a mass scale, for example, during campus recruitment or BPO hiring, it is not possible with automation.
It is not just recruiters who are facing this issue. The problem can fester and continue to hinder employee performance even at the talent development stage. Let’s briefly understand how.
Because there is no way to quantify English skills of employees, the process of identifying employees who need to undergo training is very subjective. Additionally, there is no way to zero in on employees who might need extra attention. So even if there are training sessions to improve English language communication skills, it is more or less a blanket training session and will be extremely expensive, without the desired results. Because there is no pre benchmark to determine the capabilities of an employee, there is no post benchmark to determine if the employee has actually learnt something.
The solution? Business English Assessment Software
So, how can an organization bridge the English communication skills gap? iMocha’s AI-EnglishPro is a CEFR-based Business English Evaluation resource that can help recruiters as well as talent developers assess business English skills in a quick, hassle-free way.
- Holistic evaluation of all four skills: Not only does AI-EnglishPro evaluate the four essentials of business English skills, i.e., Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing, it also helps organizations customize assessments to suit their forte of work. This means an organization can customize questions, adjust the level of difficulty and even test for situational responses instead of generic responses. This helps in understanding client interfacing skills in its entirety.
- Training Need Identification: When it comes to training and honing customer-facing skills, organizations need to first identify the skill gaps for employees in order to understand what kind of training might be required to polish their existing skills. AI-EnglishPro can help an organization objectively quantify English communication skill gaps and identify areas for training talent - at every stage of talent development.
- Global Skill Benchmarking: iMocha AI-EnglishPro incorporates globally recognized English evaluation frameworks and standards including CEFR and Cambridge English Vocabulary Profiling hosting quick and holistic English language tests that can be used as is or can be customized to measure customer facing role-based skills specific to an organization.
- AI-enabled Automation: AI-EnglishPro offers AI enabled automation to streamline mass-scale customisable assessments, which, if conducted manually, are proven to be time consuming and cost heavy. Powered with accurate NLP technology and scaled on globally recognized CEFR levels, AI-EnglishPro can successfully curb the risk of human error and biases.
- Skill Reports and in-depth Analytics: AI-EnglishPro offers insights into a candidate’s/an employee’s true business English proficiency. A personalized dashboard can help TA and TD managers deep dive into skill areas that are strong and those that might need improvement, so that immediate attention action plans can be worked out in time. An objective skills data driven approach which includes metrics such as oral fluency, language understanding, ease of readability and much more that are critical for real-life client interaction skills.
- Smart Cheating Prevention: AI-powered features of Proctoring, Window Violation and IP address blockers monitor the frequency and intensity of cheating attempted by the test taker. Additional features help in detecting impersonation, shielding the test window against screen violations such as screen sharing, etc. It enables an easy way to disqualify candidates resorting to unethical practices while attempting the assessments. This helps organizations further zeroing in on a talent pool that is truly deserving of being recruited or trained.
- Role-based Assessments: AI-EnglishPro offers the convenience of pre-designed ready-to-use tests with regularly updated and quality checked content. Organizations can choose from a vast range of already tailormade and skill-mapped assessments. This streamlines the evaluation process for specific job roles such as Customer Success Analysts or Sales Representative, a favorite for client-facing roles especially.
- Combine multiple skills - AI-EnglishPro allows the flexibility to evaluate a combination of skills in a single assessment. A highly hassle free way to identify a skilled technical consultant who is a subject matter expert and has client interaction skills needed to converse at par with global customers. The platform comes with access to the World’s largest skills library of domain, technical, functional, soft skills, etc. which can be added to an AI-EnglishPro assessment.
In today’s era where every minute is an added expense to an organization, recruiters and talent development teams cannot afford the heavy expenses of replacing unsuitable candidates or bad hires. Budget cuts mean talent development teams need to be on point while designing training programs for employees. Gaining individual level insights into a candidate or an employee’s capabilities without spending excessive time or resources on evaluations can be a boon for organizational growth.
With the help of AI-EnglishPro, organizations can hire better quality candidates from the get-go and even offer existing employees a streamlined approach to further build on their business English communication skills. This can result in a customer facing talent pool that is confident while facing external stakeholders, can easily bring clarity in client facing communication during client interaction and can ensure superior delivery experience, boosting the organization’s reputation.
