Forum - can we require our staff to speak English?
You are here:A client has raised an interesting situation involving people speaking in a language other than English in the workplace. Whose rights do we trample? Join our forum on the topic.
The Issue
"A staff member has raised the question of Non English Speaking Background staff talking amongst themselves in their native tongue whilst at work and in the staff room. The staff member concerned feels alienated at times and feels everyone should be made to speak English while at work.
Do any of you guys have a policy for this or is it a problem in your business.
Any advice or policies would be appreciated."
Our Response
Introducing a policy that people could only speak English would clearly raise issues of race discrimination (either direct or indirect).
How about this as a solution? Educating staff about treating others the way you would like to be treated.
If I was the English speaker, I can understandably feel left out of a conversation between 2 NESB's speaking in other than English. If I was the NESB person/s, I would probably feel more comfortable speaking in my original language. What is the middle ground?
Some creative solutions would be one of the NESBs then explaining during / immediately afterwards what they were talking about or were about to talk about.
That way, everyone is hopefully happy.
Interesting topic.
What do you think?
Are we looking at this too simplistically? What similar situations have you encountered? What happened?
Use the Comments feature below to tell us what you think.
We had a similar issue here.
We had a similar issue here. Red neck staff (and customers) complaining about all the Chinese speaking staff (and customers).
Not much I can do about red neck customers unfortunately.
We went through 6 month change management program of cultural awareness training.
Specific training in Asian culture (our customer base is predominately Chinese born, or second generation Chinese). Training also included a focus on understanding the Australian culture. What are the customs and norms for us and how they may differ to other cultures.
Recruitment practices targeted to specific ethic groups to compliment our customer base.
We had a combination of consultative change management programs to tackle this issue.
In addition, the message was also made very clear that I if u dont like Asians then this is NOT the place for you to be working at.
The commercial reality is that we have a diverse mix of cultures, with differing expectations of standards of service and our staff are expected to embrace those diversities in order to deliver the best possible customer service they can.
There is no quick fix here. You can't just write up a policy and expect people to change years of conditioning or set beliefs and values over night.
While we are sensitive to the personal opinions and beliefs of different people and culture, our organisation is one of inclusiveness and acceptance.
Those that couldn’t accept that have made the wise decision to find somewhere else more aligned to their beliefs and opinions.
Its not about the policy its about the months' worth of strategic change management initiatives put in place to challenge peoples thinking and assumptions about how and what here should look like.
Rgds, JG
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