Human resources are a crucial element of today's businesses. A good human resources department is integral in developing and guiding a company's culture and ensuring that the daily operations and attitudes in a workplace are conducive to keeping employees productive and happy. Without a good HR division, finding, training, and retaining key talent is almost impossible. Many issues can arise that will be near impossible to solve without the proper HR experts ready to respond.
The ability to properly communicate and assimilate diverse wants, beliefs, and needs across a single organization has become integral to competing and succeeding globally.
With more businesses operating across various nations and cultures simultaneously, the need for a skilled HR staff is increasingly more critical. This includes the need to communicate effectively with employees across a variety of languages. All employees of a company must understand the priorities, policies, and culture of the business, and to accomplish this, you must be able to speak to them in a way that resonates.
Proper human resource translation is key to a diverse company's long-term success, and is increasingly becoming a legal necessity. Finding a translation agency that you can efficiently work with, and trust, should be a top priority. In this article, we will briefly touch on some of the key reasons you should seek skilled translators to augment your HR department.
Proper HR Translation Ensures Everyone is Working Towards the Same Goals
Many companies invest a significant amount of time, effort, and money in creating internal memos that will go out to employees all over the globe. However, without proper translations, these essential documents can often be misunderstood, misinterpreted, or simply ignored as the requests of an out-of-touch corporate head. Without a proper translation, some of these documents may even be running afoul of a nation's workplace language laws. This is just a single example of how in international business, even small actions can waste time, money and run afoul of legal requirements.
Another vital aspect to consider is transcreation. Transcreation is the idea that a translator must be able to convey not only the words but the specific meaning of what is being said. Very often, especially in the business world, we speak in metaphors and figures of speech that are specific to our culture and language. A skilled language expert will reconvey the meaning into the proper context of the target language, ensuring that everyone understands the intention of what is being said.
Knowledgeable language professionals can also ensure everyone is working towards the same goals, through better understanding and more efficient collaboration.
It is important for organizations who wish to operate internationally to seek out translators that understand both the language and the culture of their employees. Without doing so, there is a risk of alienating the staff, miscommunicating, and running into a large variety of unforeseeable legal issues.
Examples of HR Content That Should be Translated:
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- Guidelines and handbooks for employees
- All training materials and safety materials
- Compliance and employment documents
- Codes of conduct
- Internal emails, memos, announcements
- Anything that is necessary for day-to-day operations
Being able to work from anywhere on the planet allows companies to be less restrictive with their talent pools. However, it also means there are many more laws to follow to be a legally compliant business.
There is no way to undersell the value that comes with efficient and clear communication between departments and locales within a business. Ensuring everyone is working towards the same goals and missions, and that no one is being inadvertently offended or confused, can save both time and money on a huge scale.
HR Translation Helps You Retain Talent
Speaking to your employees in a language they are both comfortable and familiar with will do more than help them understand your goals, it will show them that you care enough to invest in their needs and workplace environment. Giving motivated employees translated training materials and documentation, and speaking to them directly in their native tongue, helps them feel more at home, more comfortable and will lead to better production rates and a willingness to stay. In fact, more engaged employees are 75% less likely to look for another job.
According to Gallup, more highly-engaged teams show profitability increases by up to 21%. Groups with high rates of engagement and personal company investment also had reduced absences and had less turnover.
It is also well-known that good management is essential in retaining employees, yet roughly 40-60% of managers fail at their overseas assignments. The major reasons for this are the lack of language training, as well as the lack of cultural awareness. Skilled translations and consultation from those experienced in a region are key methods of avoiding these pitfalls and helping managers bridge the gaps between them and the local workforce.
HR Translation Also Helps You Avoid Causing Offense
Being a socially conscious organization is more important than ever, and huge sums of money are spent for brands to demonstrate their role in the larger community. Conversely, a single incident where a manager misspeaks or a phrase is misunderstood can have incredibly damaging effects.
More than nine-in-10 millennials would switch brands to one associated with a cause. This also means millennials are quick to turn away from a brand they perceive as intolerant or ignorant.
When speaking both with customers and employees, a business must be incredibly sensitive to the way they are speaking and the words that they use. The more diverse your workforce, the more diverse the set of issues you must be able to navigate around. HR Translation Services specialize in dealing with these exact issues.
Human Resource Translation is Incredibly Important
These were only a few of the many reasons why many companies are now investing heavily into HR translation services. With HR, there is a unique need for sensitivity, accuracy, and cultural understanding that simply cannot be replicated by general bilingual employees or services.
Helping both employees and customers feel that they are heard, understood, and catered to is essential in competing in the modern workplace, both at home and abroad.
Take the time to find a service or to find the proper talent that can help you manage these needs. It may take time and money to do so, but in the long run it will prove to be well worth the extra effort.