Today, your workplace is no longer limited to the city you live in. With remote work and rapidly expanding global enterprises, a single company’s workforce can easily extend around the world and include employees (and customers) who speak many different languages. 

Seamless collaboration and communication between employees across channels, languages, and regions is necessary in today’s global workplace. In the US alone, 90% of employers have a workforce that includes employees who do not use English as their primary language.

Embracing multilingual teams creates a new opportunity for companies to build linguistically and culturally diverse teams that help businesses grow and thrive. But it also presents a challenge: How do you empower a global workforce to collaborate across communication barriers?

At Grammarly, we believe that effective communication is a strategic imperative for business success, and we recognize the importance of seamless cross-language communication as part of this. That’s why in this blog post, we’re sharing the key to empowering multilingual teams—and clueing you in to our Translate app action to help teams overcome language barriers with confidence.

The Benefits of a Multilingual Workforce

No matter if you have remote teams that expand across the globe or if you employ workers with a non-English-language background in just one location, there are many benefits to hiring a multilingual workforce. In today’s globalized economy, having diverse cultures and perspectives can foster new ideas, unlock creativity, and speed up innovation—not to mention open you up to do business in new markets. 

Here are just a few of the benefits of a multilingual workforce:

• New, diverse perspectives. A diverse workforce introduces new perspectives that can boost creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. This unlocks global collaboration that can drive your business forward.
• More business opportunities. If your company is planning on expanding to new, international markets, having a multilingual workforce is a must. When you have employees who can speak the local language, you’ll be able to break into new markets, increase profitability, and connect with new audiences.
• Authentic localized marketing. Speaking of new markets, if your company is expanding internationally, you’ll want to be able to do localized marketing. Having a multilingual workforce that knows the intricacies of communication in your new target market can help you connect authentically with your new audience in their native language and dialect.
• Better sales experiences. A multilingual or global sales team that can communicate with potential customers in their primary language will be better positioned to meet customer expectations and cater to their needs. This sets your sales team up to win more deals and grow your business.
• Enhanced customer service. A multilingual customer support team can help you to communicate more effectively with customers around the globe. This not only demonstrates cultural understanding but also allows you to offer personalized customer service experiences, boosting overall customer satisfaction.
• Increased employee confidence. When employees can communicate their thoughts and ideas in the language they feel most comfortable speaking, they feel more confident. Empowering a multilingual workforce shows that you care about your employees and want to set them up for success.

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of a multilingual workforce, let’s get into the barriers that might get in the way when teams communicate across languages.

How to Overcome Language Barriers

Miscommunication in the workplace costs US businesses an estimated $1.2 trillion every year. Adding language barriers can make miscommunication an even more significant drain on your team. 

Language barriers typically result from differences in communication styles, norms, values, and language proficiency. These barriers may lead to misunderstandings, misinterpretations, or cultural insensitivity.

Here are a few actionable steps that can help overcome language barriers in business:

• Encourage team members to use clear, concise language and avoid the use of jargon, highly technical terms, figurative language, and slang that may not be understood in other languages.
• Implement regular cultural sensitivity training sessions and reinforce those learnings in a shared brand style guide that includes rules and expectations regarding internal communication and etiquette.
• Provide adequate training and educational resources around industry-specific terminology and branded terms. Invest in AI writing tools that are trained to give culturally sensitive communication suggestions and recommendations as employees write.
• Empower multilingual teams with in-line translation tools that help them seamlessly communicate across different languages. From real-time translation apps to AI-powered language platforms, you can use these tools to remove language barriers and encourage collaboration among all your team members. 

That last one is the real key because in-line translation tools foster effortless global communication between employees and customers. When you think of multilingual teams as a competitive advantage and appropriately resource your teams to overcome language barriers, you open your business up to new levels of success and growth. 

Make Global Communication Effortless With Grammarly

To help you empower and effectively resource your global teams, Grammarly has introduced the Translate app action: an in-line translation feature that gives multilingual teams and individuals the ability to communicate effortlessly and overcome language barriers with confidence, all within the apps where they already work.

Grammarly’s translation capabilities are available wherever your teammates are writing. This eliminates the need to context switch and navigate between tabs or apps to use secondary translation services. Keeping your team in the flow of work increases their productivity while making their communication more effective. At Grammarly, we want to help everybody feel more confident writing in their primary language as well as in others.

The Translate app action is available to Grammarly Enterprise customers. Learn more about how you can empower your global workforce with effortless in-line translation capabilities.