Benchmarking: how businesses measure employees’ language skills to manage training and keep a competitive edge.
Most managers of leading businesses would
agree that effective communication is a vital part
of success – whether that is between the business and its clients, or internal communication, imparting important information and messages
to other employees.
For international organisations, this has come to mean that more and more staff are expected to have proficiency in second or tertiary languages to conduct business.
Effective communication
There are still organisations for which the abilities (or inabilities) of their staff to speak other languages are an unknown quantity. Employees may have joined at different points in the company’s history, often with differing qualifications in other languages – perhaps with no formal qualifications at all, just an unquantified ability.
Can you imagine another core business area where such a vital skill was treated so casually? Would the finance department have only a sketchy idea of the qualifications of its accountants? Would you be able to get a job in the legal department on the basis that you had worked with lawyers for a couple of years and had ‘sort of picked it up’?
However, for some businesses this is their only approach to the languages spoken within their organisation. On the other hand many leading organisations already use the Business Language Testing Service (BULATS) to test the abilities of job applicants, and use its reporting facility to determine existing levels of competency in languages and set standards.
Developed by Cambridge ESOL Examinations together with the Universidad de Salamanca, Alliance Française, the Goethe Institut and in consultation with the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE), BULATS can report on the abilities of English, French, German and Spanish language users. The test can be used to determine abilities across the widest spectrum of language usage – from beginners, to those at a very advanced level. This means that only one test need be used across the whole organisation for all the different languages and abilities. Additionally the test can be pen-and-paper or computer-based with tests of Speaking and Writing also available.
International recognition
The reports give scores between 0–100, which are mapped against the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and also the ALTE levels, so the results are not only recognised internationally, but have an international context which can be applied to other qualifications using these frameworks.
BULATS benchmarking Kit
While businesses in more than 40 countries use BULATS to measure language ability in their organisations, Cambridge ESOL has developed a further tool using BULATS which can give even more information to managers about employees’ skills. The BULATS Benchmarking Kit has been developed as a powerful tool for managers to map the level of language needed for their business against the skills employees already have.
Simple forms
The system works from a series of simple forms: Managers use a questionnaire to define the level of skills their workforce needs in specific areas, then individual employees fill in their own forms, describing their language abilities.
The results can be plotted against each other to indicate the desired level of language skills for carrying out the work, the skills which exist within the organisation and also where there are shortfalls. BULATS tests are then used to give an objective measure of employees’ language ability.
The simplicity of the system enables it to be used in a variety of ways, from a simple self-audit of a specific aspect of a business, to a more detailed cross-referencing study across the whole body of an organisation.
Benefits to business
Eventually in business you have to answer the question – how does this affect the bottom line? The answer is that a detailed knowledge of the languages spoken in an organisation will help that organisation understand what resources it has, and how best to use them for added value. Furthermore, while language training is essential to develop communication skills within an organisation, it can represent significant cost investment. BULATS Benchmarking can be used as a gap analysis tool – spotting where weaknesses are, and enabling training to be used to strengthen those areas most in need of it, so that competitiveness is maintained.
Benefits to employees
As well as the obvious advantages to the employer, BULATS Benchmarking has benefits for employees too. Being able to see where their specific skills
lie in relation to the organisation’s needs can be useful to employees in tracking their progress
and career development – and their targets can
be included in their personal performance appraisal goals.
Setting standards
Benchmarking using BULATS can be a useful
way for a company to carry out a skills and training audit of languages, to ensure it has the right skills and training in place to remain competitive. It can be a useful tool for recruitment, not only for screening job applicants, but also in setting the standards for potential recruits because BULATS is cross-referred to specific international standards; these can be specifically mentioned in recruitment advertising (i.e. ‘must be able to speak English to CEFR Level B2 or above’).
For internal recruitment, having a specified knowledge of each member of staff’s language abilities can make decisions on promotions,
or secondment abroad much more precise.
However, the best thing about BULATS Benchmarking has been saved until last –
it is a free service. Cambridge ESOL has made
the methodology, the questionnaires and the charts free to any businesses who want to use them. The toolkit can be downloaded from the BULATS website at www.bulats.org
To request an information pack and CD, contact info@CambridgeESOL.org