Has this happened to you? The conversation drifting
over the cubicle wall is in Chinese, and you wonder: Are my colleagues talking
about me
Or you and a coworker are in the cafeteria talking
about Mexico's World Cup chances. Suddenly, you notice angry glances from the
next table. It's not your soccer analysis; it's that you're not speaking
English that galls them.
As America's workplaces become more diverse, so do the
languages spoken there. And sometimes tensions and controversies result
.
A ‘Language-Hostile Environment'
Susan Warner knows the feelings
well. The 65-year-old president and general counsel of Human Resource Trouble
Shooters, a Philadelphia consulting firm, recalls the early days of her career
as the only female HR manager. The eight other men "spoke their male
language -- football or baseball or curse words -- and shut me out. It was very
conscious. They didn't want me to understand them. If I complained, they
adjourned to the men's room."
Warner compares this experience
to using a language other than English in the workplace. "If you can speak
English, you should," she says. "It's very disconcerting to have
different languages spoken. It's rude, and it increases the chances of people
not understanding each other. I call that a ‘language-hostile environment.'"
Warner realizes her position may
sound harsh. But, "this is really about inclusion," she says.
"If you don't speak English, you're shutting people out."
Feeling Shut Out
There are exceptions -- for
example, on a manufacturing line where everyone speaks a common language other
than English or during a break when no English-only speakers are present.
Warner agrees that a worker who does not know English or who speaks it poorly
might feel more comfortable using another language. She suggests employers
should provide English-language instruction.
But even when talking about the
World Cup at lunch with other people around, Warner believes the use of foreign
languages is inappropriate. "My presumption would be that [speakers of
another language] don't want me to know what they're saying," she
explains. "It's the same as if two people whispered while I sat nearby.
That's a deliberate intention to shut me out."
Cubicle workers "overhear
each other all the time," Warner says. "What we say in cubicles is
not confidential. In fact, many times overhearing a conversation gives people
more information, so they do a better job at work." In this case,
non-English conversations are not just exclusionary, but counterproductive for
everyone, she says.
Policies for Multilingual Workplaces
Hugh Tranum, publisher of the
newsletters Managing Diversity and HR Fact Finder, concurs with Warner. "I
do labor management law," he says. "In the middle of one meeting, a
director and assistant broke into their native language. That kept me out of
the loop." It took a meeting with their supervisor to make them understand
that despite their benign intentions, it created exclusionary perceptions.
Today, Tranum says, companies are
developing policies to address multilingual etiquette. "They see it as an
issue they need to think about, without bringing the hammer down. Hopefully
they can cover conditions like whether a conversation is private or work
English Comprehension Can Be Required
While federal law does not cover
workplace languages, Warner says it is legal to require an ability to speak or
read English if an employee must communicate at work or read job-related
material.
"Even an entry-level janitorial job requires skills and
duties that must be communicated," Warner says. "Think about a
hospital with many sanitation issues. I can't imagine any job where it's not
necessary to at least understand English."
So should managers learn another
language to communicate with employees? "It's healthy to know more than
one language," says Warner. "We don't encourage that enough in the
United States. It certainly would behoove a supervisor for safety reasons. And
a social worker or physician's assistant working in a primarily Hispanic area
probably should be required to speak, read and understand Spanish, and
understand Spanish culture; that's a specific requirement for that job. But
there's no law requiring it."
Tranum notes that particularly in
technology and marketing, workers are now hired because of fluency in languages
like Chinese and Korean as well as Spanish. "There will be an amalgam of
languages spoken in the workplace," he says. "It's a fact: People who
don't speak those languages may not know everything that's going on
source : http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/party-etiquette-talking-listening-mingling.html
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق