ironweed
12-28-2005, 11:05 AM
LOL, the triumph of "Pan-Aryanism"? :p
===============
Link (http://www.courant.com/business/hc-multilingualworkplace.artdec26,0,926014.story)
Hindi Spoken Here
Large Retailers Grasp Benefits Of Multilingual Workforce, But Challenges Abound
By BILL BRUBAKER
Washington Post
December 26 2005
WASHINGTON - Soon after he arrived at the upscale Wegmans Food Markets store in Dulles, Va., last year, executive chef Llewellyn Correia discovered that many of the 120 employees he supervised had not been attending the company's mandatory safety and sanitation classes.
The reason, he said: "The courses were in English, and many of my employees don't speak English."
Correia said some of his Asian cooks needed training in U.S. food-handling standards, which are more rigorous than the ones in their home countries and more likely to be enforced by government inspectors. "It's very hard to break old habits," he said.
The lack of training, he said, also was raising safety issues among some employees who were posing a danger to themselves and their co-workers. "We had lots of issues like slips and falls," he said.
Today, the Dulles Wegmans offers a Web-based version of its safety and sanitation courses in Mandarin and Spanish, in addition to English - just one nod the supermarket says it is making to a multilingual workplace in which more than 200 of its 650 employees do not speak English as their primary language.
In a region with one of the nation's lowest unemployment rates, managers at large retailers such as the Dulles Wegmans say hiring immigrant workers makes good business sense, filling low-paying jobs that many U.S.-born workers don't want with employees motivated to move up through the ranks as they learn the language. With English speakers, "You train somebody and - boom - they leave. You lose a lot of money actually training people," Correia said.
Having a polyglot workforce can also boost sales and build loyalty among non-English-speaking customers who can ask a question - Are the Pepsi 12-packs still on sale? - in their native tongues.
But it also means grappling with such management challenges as how to ensure that a miscommunication does not lead to an accident or regulatory violation, give orders to employees who speak far better Tagalog than English, or help people who once lived two oceans apart work together behind the same deli counter.
"Sometimes it's tough. You know, the one-on-one communication, getting your point across," Mike Provo, a Dulles Wegmans manager, said as he surveyed a row of cashiers whose first languages were Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, Hindi and Urdu. "It takes a little bit more time, and a little bit more effort and patience."
The challenges of managing a multicultural workforce have spawned a cottage industry of outside consultants, in-house specialists, book and magazine publishers, and others.
Wegmans, based in Rochester, N.Y., has retained language instructors for its Dulles and Fairfax, Va., stores to teach their employees a bit more English and their managers un poco Espaqol.
"The English class was important to me because ... " entry-level cook Rosa Martinez, a Honduran immigrant, said on a recent afternoon. She paused to consider how to finish the sentence in English, then continued with a smile: "Porque necesito ingles en mi trabajo" (because I need English in my job).
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has started an "Office of Diversity" that holds regular seminars to "instill in all managers a better understanding of the different cultures," the company says.
"It's almost like working at the U.N. here now," said Dempsey D. Bell, co-manager of the Wal-Mart in Sterling, Va., where 32 languages are spoken by the store's employees. "The diversity is great for us because our customers are becoming more diverse and, if they need some help in the store, we can usually find an employee who speaks their language."
A New Jersey company called DiversityInc Media LLC sells training videos, a 539-page how-to manual and a glossy magazine named DiversityInc. Consultants such as Ivy Planning Group LLC of Rockville, Md., offer seminars on how to build, manage and make money with a diverse workforce.
"We tell companies: Most of your work is around driving revenue and remaining profitable, and if you are going to remain profitable and serve customers, we've got to figure this thing out," said Ivy's president, Janet Crenshaw Smith, whose clients have included Pepco, Hilton Hotels and Lockheed Martin.
===============
Link (http://www.courant.com/business/hc-multilingualworkplace.artdec26,0,926014.story)
Hindi Spoken Here
Large Retailers Grasp Benefits Of Multilingual Workforce, But Challenges Abound
By BILL BRUBAKER
Washington Post
December 26 2005
WASHINGTON - Soon after he arrived at the upscale Wegmans Food Markets store in Dulles, Va., last year, executive chef Llewellyn Correia discovered that many of the 120 employees he supervised had not been attending the company's mandatory safety and sanitation classes.
The reason, he said: "The courses were in English, and many of my employees don't speak English."
Correia said some of his Asian cooks needed training in U.S. food-handling standards, which are more rigorous than the ones in their home countries and more likely to be enforced by government inspectors. "It's very hard to break old habits," he said.
The lack of training, he said, also was raising safety issues among some employees who were posing a danger to themselves and their co-workers. "We had lots of issues like slips and falls," he said.
Today, the Dulles Wegmans offers a Web-based version of its safety and sanitation courses in Mandarin and Spanish, in addition to English - just one nod the supermarket says it is making to a multilingual workplace in which more than 200 of its 650 employees do not speak English as their primary language.
In a region with one of the nation's lowest unemployment rates, managers at large retailers such as the Dulles Wegmans say hiring immigrant workers makes good business sense, filling low-paying jobs that many U.S.-born workers don't want with employees motivated to move up through the ranks as they learn the language. With English speakers, "You train somebody and - boom - they leave. You lose a lot of money actually training people," Correia said.
Having a polyglot workforce can also boost sales and build loyalty among non-English-speaking customers who can ask a question - Are the Pepsi 12-packs still on sale? - in their native tongues.
But it also means grappling with such management challenges as how to ensure that a miscommunication does not lead to an accident or regulatory violation, give orders to employees who speak far better Tagalog than English, or help people who once lived two oceans apart work together behind the same deli counter.
"Sometimes it's tough. You know, the one-on-one communication, getting your point across," Mike Provo, a Dulles Wegmans manager, said as he surveyed a row of cashiers whose first languages were Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, Hindi and Urdu. "It takes a little bit more time, and a little bit more effort and patience."
The challenges of managing a multicultural workforce have spawned a cottage industry of outside consultants, in-house specialists, book and magazine publishers, and others.
Wegmans, based in Rochester, N.Y., has retained language instructors for its Dulles and Fairfax, Va., stores to teach their employees a bit more English and their managers un poco Espaqol.
"The English class was important to me because ... " entry-level cook Rosa Martinez, a Honduran immigrant, said on a recent afternoon. She paused to consider how to finish the sentence in English, then continued with a smile: "Porque necesito ingles en mi trabajo" (because I need English in my job).
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has started an "Office of Diversity" that holds regular seminars to "instill in all managers a better understanding of the different cultures," the company says.
"It's almost like working at the U.N. here now," said Dempsey D. Bell, co-manager of the Wal-Mart in Sterling, Va., where 32 languages are spoken by the store's employees. "The diversity is great for us because our customers are becoming more diverse and, if they need some help in the store, we can usually find an employee who speaks their language."
A New Jersey company called DiversityInc Media LLC sells training videos, a 539-page how-to manual and a glossy magazine named DiversityInc. Consultants such as Ivy Planning Group LLC of Rockville, Md., offer seminars on how to build, manage and make money with a diverse workforce.
"We tell companies: Most of your work is around driving revenue and remaining profitable, and if you are going to remain profitable and serve customers, we've got to figure this thing out," said Ivy's president, Janet Crenshaw Smith, whose clients have included Pepco, Hilton Hotels and Lockheed Martin.