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Being able to speak more than one language (usually English and some other) is becoming more and more demanded. English isn’t the “one and only” language in the world anymore, since non-English speaking population is on the rise.
For example there are around 500 million Spanish speakers worldwide, which technically makes it the second most common language in the world. Around 100 million people speak German (rank 10 in the world), while French is ranked 14th with around 76 million speakers and so on.
With these figures in mind, it is recommended for businesses to start hiring bilingual employees, at least a few of them for starters. If we put together Spanish, French, German and other common language speakers in the world, we will get a brand new market with approximately 1 billion potential consumers that a business can expand to.
So why exactly are bilingual employees important?
Well, there are a number of reasons for that. Bilingual employees can help your business tap into those new markets more easily, since they speak their mother tongue and understand cultural differences between you two.
Imagine you are doing a social media campaign in a foreign market. Not only you will have to translate all your messages into the specific language (or hire a professional translator if you don’t have bilingual employees), but also need to research about that country’s people, the way they think, what they like, etc.
Having bilingual or multilingual people by your side will allow you to save time and resources on research and translators. They will help understand your new consumers and also monitor your social media campaign, answer comments from users and pinpoint what works and what doesn’t.
If you are considering going global, a lot of changes await you in the future and the best way to start dealing with those is hiring a bilingual/multilingual staff. They will not only help with setting up your local services in a foreign country and tweaking your website content, but also coach their fellow employees, creating a much more productive environment in a new market.
Value in the eyes of your business partner
Oftentimes when companies go global, they schedule a meeting with their foreign “soon to be” partner company. A long meeting takes place where everything is discussed prior to starting the partnership. Bilingual employees will be invaluable in those endeavors.
You might think that hiring a few translators can always do the trick and help you get along with your business partner, but the truth is that translators are perceived as a part of a very strict business environment, which isn’t what you want to get.
You want to build healthy, warm business relationships with your partners and having a number of team members that speak that foreign language will ease up the atmosphere a lot (since you can avoid translators) and also show your business partner that you really care about the new opportunity and have already taken the first steps towards integrating into their home market.
Bilingual employees can be one of your secret ace cards today and they will certainly become essential in the near future. Much like English was a must for getting a decent job, soon it will be “English and Spanish/German/French” to get that same job. A wise businessman would take the opportunity now and get a few steps ahead of competitors in the future, when those international language skills will become a must.
