Being Bilingual in the Workplace

Data proves that those who are bilingual can improve your ability to problem solve, can open your perspective into a holistic point of view as well as add value to yourself as an asset to a company.

Being bilingual in the work place opens up opportunities to travel and represent your company and expand your network globally. According to The Economist you can expect a 2% increase in your salary.

Why would companies want bilingual employees?

For one it can cut costs of interpreters and translators. Also, as an individual that identifies with a foreign country you can bridge the gap between culture and business. You also are more likely to be aware of the culture norms and can approach conversations and interactions accordingly. In result, business form better relations with foreign partners through your talent to being bilingual. You can read more about this the importance of being bilingual in this article my peer wrote here.

In their article similar to mine they went into more debt of how you can improve your value by being bilingual . We both mentioned some of the benefits being an able to work well with clients of other countries. However, the author of the article went more into debt where as, they correlated it to the type or field of business. In addition, the author brought an interesting perspective of foreign language incompetency. In this situation during the hiring process they claim to be bilingual but employers are not asking to what extent? The level of proficiency can range and may be exaggerated, resulting in a lack of commitment.

Eventually, we both came to an agreement that being proficient in more than one language is a beneficial factor and is important to businesses when connecting with other foreign businesses.