Do You Have to Know the Language in Order to Train Your Spanish Speaking Employees?
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This is a question that sometimes comes up when discussing the opportunities and challenges of having Spanish-speaking employees in agricultural operations. Often, the perception is that if you don’t know the language, it can be pretty hard to train these individuals to do what you need them to do. Knowing the language helps, but this by itself, won’t guarantee success when training your Spanish-speaking employees.
Sometimes, training is delegated to someone who may be bilingual, but may not have the skills or abilities to train. Other times, we are so busy getting things done, that we run out of time to do the training and when we get to it, we approach it without a well thought-out and organized training plan. Training should be viewed as an investment that will return employees that produce results with consistent quality and will help in your retention efforts.
Assuming that you have a training plan, the training skills and the time to conduct the training, what are some of the things to keep in mind if you don’t know the language and want to train your Spanish-speaking employees?
Here are some suggestions.
We may not know the language well enough to understand every detail, but we will follow along as you show us consistent procedures that we can learn by repetition.
We realize that we are in the USA and learning English is key to our success. We want to be a part of your team and when you talk to us in English it will motivate us to continue learning the language. In addition, as we learn new words, these will become part of the vocabulary we use to communicate in your operation.
Stay away from ambiguous terms. For example, "let’s plan on having a Pow Wow about this issue…" will be hard for some of us to understand.
For those of us that may not be bilingual, having translated documents will help in understanding the details of the procedures we are being trained on.
Try to learn some Spanish if you haven’t started already. Besides helping to better communicate with your Spanish-speaking employees, it will open a new world with new experiences to be explored. You don’t have to be 100% fluent in the language to be able to communicate. Key words and phrases will help you get the point across.
When someone says "Arriba, Arriba ,Arriba" or "Ándale, Ándale, Ándale", we may not get it. Most of us did not grow up watching Speedy Gonzalez and to some, it may sound offensive...
Training employees that may not understand the English language can be a challenge, but it also can be a fun and rewarding experience.
Please let me know about your experiences in training a multicultural workforce and how you have dealt with some of the challenges that do come up as you train Spanish-speaking employees.
I thank you for reading, and for your comments.
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After having initially read these comments, I spent the next couple of days asking dozens of my Spanish speaking immigrant friends and co-workers (representing the meat packaging industry, greenhouses, textiles and manufactoring) if any of them had ever been offered, through their employing company, an official training program sensitive to their lingustic needs. In all cases the answer was "no."
All to often Spanish speaking immigrant workers feel they are the most expendable and exploitable class --- That they should simply and quitely learn from their coworkers, keep their heads low and never even mention their language barrier struggles. In so many cases, not only is there not a program in place to train the Spanish speaking work force, many of them feel the pressure from outdated and ugly American hubris.... "You're in America now, speak English." Given that environment, the last thing they expect is the consideration of a unique training program created to tailor fit their specific needs.
After having asked the earlier question, I then asked if having such a program in place would boost their morale and sense of belonging in the workplace, creating a stronger sense of loyality to the company. The response was predictable and unanimous: A resounding "Yes."
Human nature alone suggest the clear logic behind why it behooves any employeer to take the extra time and little resources needed to properly address and train their Spanish speaking work force. It's a win-win situation... One where an employeer will truly see a positive return on his or her investment. The end result will be a better trained work force with a stronger sense of company loyality and higher morale. This equates to better productivity and increased employee retention.
What Orlando suggest here isn't "high in the sky ivory tower academic hog wash (no pun intended)." Rather, it's real life common sense, simple steps a company can take to help develop a fully trained and skill workforce.
Paul,
Thank you for your comments!
As an immigrant myself, I have experienced some of the situations you describe. I have kept my “head low” and not asked or said anything that would have identified me as not understanding what was going on because of my inability to speak the language. I guess it was the “safe” thing to do. I am sure glad this is in the past…
I have seen some employers/managers that, for whatever reason, do not appreciate or value the talent and potential some Latino employees bring to their operations (I think this is an exception, rather than the norm, however). But, I have also seen operations that have made it a priority to help their Latino employees learn the language and provide training that will help them be productive from the start.
Like you say, it is just common sense; simple steps a company can take to help develop a fully trained and skilled workforce that will produce consistent results.
Orlando Gil
translat@mtcnet.net
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