Telephone 020 8295 5877
Telephone 020 8295 5877
A familiar name in the UK utilities market, our client has French as the official corporate language of their group especially on the operational and technical side. Many employees relocate to various locations in France and all executive PA’s need to be bilingual as well as those senior managers involved with international projects.
The Challenge: Their Learning & Development team looked to develop a UK-wide approach to the language training offering to employees in order that staff could receive a consistent standard of training that was, above all, fit for purpose.
At the time, the provision of language training had developed on an ad-hoc basis with each site holding relationships with local suppliers.
Therefore they appointed Babel to plan and undertake the training. There were requirements Babel needed to keep in mind such as aligning learner achievement with the company’s own language proficiency standard so that abilities could be assessed company-wide.
The L&D team also needed a flexible system to enable them to prioritise the needs of the learner as well as decide on the training type (one-to-one, group sessions, in-company, on-line or guided self-study).
Our Solution: We have developed a range of solutions to be offered that could include:
Each year, we deliver in excess of 3,500 hours of training to 140 learners at 12 different locations in the UK and France, as well as online. All agreed training content is customised with flexible schedules offered by personal tutors. Progress tests are implemented across all locations in March and October.
The Result:
The overall satisfaction felt by the language learners continues to be very high (100%). When responding to our annual Satisfaction Survey, pleasingly, all the participants commented that they were either ‘very satisfied’ (85%) or ‘satisfied’ (15%) with their language training and ‘very satisfied’ (91%) or ‘satisfied’ (9%) with their tutors’ teaching approach. The majority of the participants also felt confident about achieving their language aims. As a result, 91% of the learners felt that they were more confident in using the second language.
“As our relationship with Babel has developed over the years, I have found you to be responsive to our needs, willing to accommodate complex requirements and always extremely keen to provide a great level of service that has met, and in some cases, exceeded our expectations”.
"I enjoyed learning how to deal with situations emerging from cultural differences within the USA (dialects, accents). Some really helpful insight into the American mind-set, especially business life. Also, the ability to phrase things in a way that US clients understand. Now I understand that there are some things here in the EU that US citizens never use so cannot understand."
American Cultural Training
Computacenter
"Thought-provoking course which gives a great insight into other cultures and how to adapt and improve your own communication for the greater good."
Working Across Cultures
BNP Paribas Securities Services