Foreign Languages in the workplace

remorseless

I was talking to a friend the other day and he mentioned that his manager mentioned in the last team meeting that they must speak English only when at their desk?
The office is multi-cultural in central London with mostly expats who speak their language amongst each other. All business as usual is conducted in English (of course)

Is that a 'normal' request? We're in the UK of course, her issue seem that she doesn't like hearing other languages around her more than impacting any work performance!

Does anyone have any 'English-speaking-only-when-at-work' company policy?

1940sGal

My sister works for a well known coffee shop chain and they've made it clear that, in the presence of customers, all conversations must be in English.

t0rt0ise

Otherwise the customers will think they are being talked about. I can understand the rule.

DandelionPatrol

If challenged everyone should stick together and confirm that they were speaking English or not talking at all and suggest that she is having delusions.

remorseless

Customer facing is always in local language as it should be.

The conversation are amongst peers. For example:
Marie and Marc work in the same team and when at their desks they cannot talk to each in French. If Andrew from another team joins in, obviously they would speak English.

The office is very multi-cultural, there are entire teams (in London) where the majority are not native and most of them speak other languages amongst each other. Only this team has been asked to stick to English!

Transformers

remorseless wrote: »

Customer facing is always in local language as it should be.

The conversation are amongst peers. For example:
Marie and Marc work in the same team and when at their desks they cannot talk to each in French. If Andrew from another team joins in, obviously they would speak English.

The office is very multi-cultural, there are entire teams (in London) where the majority are not native and most of them speak other languages amongst each other. Only this team has been asked to stick to English!

BUT, in your example, Andrew would not be able to join in as he would not know what the initial conversation was about unless he spoke French... which is not very inclusive is it?

I understand why the manager would want everyone to speak English in a UK based work environment - it avoids the ability for some to have 'private' conversations when they should be working.

scubaangel

At one of my former work places we were very multicultural - often on shift I would be the only native English speaker and couldn't speak either Arabic or Nepalese which were the two common languages among most of the other staff, it made for a very uncomfortable work place when I could spend an entire shift not speaking to my colleagues as they were holding conversations around me in their own languages - that said there was a real culture among alot of them that they wouldnt speak english even when facing customers unless absolutely necessary despite there being a company wide rule that at work we should all speak english to one another and customers.

Doshwaster

We have French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish and various other languages where I work. If two people of the same native language are chatting in their own lingo then it really doesn't bother me. Anything work related and written communication such as email should be in English of course.

In fact I have visited multinational companies in Europe where they have English as the official company language since they have people from so many nationalities on site and work with customers and suppliers all over the world. If you go to visit major companies Switzerland, you will find that the French speakers don't speak German and the German speakers don't speak French so they use English as a common language.

asajj

Worked in a multicultural environment where Russian, Greek, Spanish, French etc were all together.

All business talk were in English but private conversations were in everyone's native languages and no one was bothered. If someone came over to our desk, we would switch back to English.

Also, sometimes it is easier to explain things in your own language and it doesn't mean you are chit-chatting while you are supposed to be working.

However I have heard different people having similar issues in work place and if manager/company asks for it, you gotta accept that. I personally would feel strange about it if I was asked.

gettingready

I have worked in a very big, very well known (worldwide) company who's product probably everyone has so I mean REALLY big and with very multi national office in London.

Within my team, sorry but it was VERY annoying as Spanish was used 80% of the day, including conversations which I should be able to participate in but felt excluded. Yes, when I walked over they would switch to English but it was very unpleasant overall to feel they were doing it for my benefit.

We had no clients coming to the offices unless to a meeting of some sort and we had meeting rooms for that - we were going out to clients and of course for UK based clients the official language was English and then depending what country we were going to - local language was used on client's site.

But working in that office was very unpleasant as lots of non Spanish speakers and non French speakers (second most popular among staff was French) felt excluded 80% of the time.

I am not a native English speaker but I feel at work, in UK, all spoken/written communications among staff should be in English.With perhaps discussions over translation being in the target language.

I am not talking bar/shop/warehouse work but really posh, very well known company with offices in possibly every country in the world.

sangie595

remorseless wrote: »

I was talking to a friend the other day and he mentioned that his manager mentioned in the last team meeting that they must speak English only when at their desk?
The office is multi-cultural in central London with mostly expats who speak their language amongst each other. All business as usual is conducted in English (of course)

Is that a 'normal' request? We're in the UK of course, her issue seem that she doesn't like hearing other languages around her more than impacting any work performance!

Does anyone have any 'English-speaking-only-when-at-work' company policy?

"Normal" is irrelevant. As is everything else. It is stipulated that employees will speak English at work. End of stipulation and not up for debate. What you or they think is the reason is also not up for debate.


But I can see al sorts of good reasons for this, including the fact that it protects speakers of non-English languages - they can't be accused of bullying or harassing others if all conversations are in the language of the work place and heard by everyone.