Bank Technology News  |  July 2008

By Michael Sisk

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It is not new that English is the global language for business. What is new, however, is the pace of globalization, which is making cross-border commerce, acquisitions, and exchange of best practices more common, and the need for English proficiency more vital throughout organizations.

In the past, large companies such as GE have designed proprietary e-learning tools to teach so-called business English across the global enterprise. The trouble with this approach is these programs tended to be expensive to develop, difficult to assess and inflexible—unable to adapt quickly to the constant addition of new terms, idioms and acronyms that constantly crop up in business English. “It’s a huge issue,” says Rodney Nelsestuen, a research director at TowerGroup, who adds that today’s business pace is so demanding, the push for efficiencies so intense, it’s simply not acceptable to slow things down with questions in mid sentence about language.

In response, companies are increasingly turning to a scalable, online solution from GlobalEnglish, a 10-year old, privately held company that now claims 450 clients among the Global 2000, including Citigroup, HSBC, BNP Paribas, ING, Finansbank in Turkey, Banco Bradesco in Brazil, Emirates Bank in the UAE and Raiffeisenbank Russia. “BNP Paribas has told us, ‘We’re not a French bank, we’re a global bank,’” says GlobalEnglish CEO Deepak Desai. “As they make purchases of banks in Poland, Czech, Romania and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, they need to use English. ‘Those people aren’t going to learn French,’ [BNP executives] tell us, ‘and we need to find a way to communicate and compete.’” Any bank making an acquisition or a series of acquisitions needs to be able to take best practices and push them across the enterprise, whether the employees are in Brazil or Korea, Desai argues. “You have to be able to explain it, and that has to be done in English.”

Desai says that GlobalEnglish offers a number of advantages. It’s scalable and thus more cost efficient for banks. It’s also available anywhere, whereas English tutors outside of major cities abroad can be difficult if not impossible to find. And these language tools are available 24/7—such as “cultural notes,” which gives background on what it’s like to conduct business in other countries. What’s more, Desai argues, GlobalEnglish provides a more intense interactive experience than going to class, where during a one-hour class with other students someone might only speak for five minutes. The interactive elements of GlobalEnglish include teaching in the context of real business situations, such as apologizing to a customer, and simulated conversations where the student records an answer.

A key aspect to GlobalEnglish that distinguishes it from many proprietary solutions is a very robust reporting capability. Companies can see how many people are using the teaching tools, of course, as well as how much time they’re spending, the level of improvement and, critically, how increased English proficiency has improved productivity. That measure is achieved largely through surveys that ask how much time per week users estimate they save by, for instance, not needing to constantly decode emails. Typically the saving is one to seven hours per week. “This approach has some real promise,” says Nelsestuen, “and as we globalize [mastering business English] will only become more necessary.”

Emirates Bank in the United Arab Emirates is a good example of a once exclusively regional bank with global ambitions. The bank set out to take advantage of the government’s desire to become the financial capital of the Middle East, explains Heyam Farrington, senior manager of management and business communications training at the bank. As part of this strategy, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs set a series of goals, including a 25 percent “Emiratisation” rate among banks—defined as the process of transferring skills and knowledge from expatriates to UAE nationals. Farrington realized this would demand a command of English across the enterprise. “The financial industry is very competitive; if we wish to have international clients, our employees must be able to speak the language of business—English.”

Three years ago, the bank could only train 90 employees per year in the classroom setting. Today it can train 500 for the same amount of money, in part because classroom time has been reduced from nine hours a week to two hours. (Unlike most of GlobalEnglish’s clients, Emirates has chosen a blended training approach with both GlobalEnglish and some classroom time). What’s more, 85 percent of students successfully complete the new program, a 50 percent improvement over the old, strictly classroom setting. To Farrington’s mind, the reach and effectiveness of English training is not just a corporate necessity, it verges on a national responsibility. “We have to train these people. They are the future of the country. They are the leaders of tomorrow.” (c) 2008 Bank Technology News and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.banktechnews.com http://www.sourcemedia.com

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