BMW engineer Nigel Grainger, 35, writes e-mails in German about crankshafts and camshafts to his colleagues in Munich — but he can’t ask for a knife and fork in a German restaurant.
“My social German is a little weak,” admits Grainger, who works at BMW’s Hams Hall plant in Warwickshire, which builds more than 150,000 engines a year.
Grainger is using his language skills for a more important task: to develop the engine that will power a new version of the Mini.
He is one of about 200 employees in Hams Hall’s workforce of 650 who speaks German, ranging from basic to fluent. They are among Britain’s savviest workers, because they understand that in the 21st century it is no longer good enough for Britons to assume that “someone out there will speak English”.
Language expert David Graddol warns in a study published recently by the British Council that monolingual English graduates face “a bleak economic future” as multilingual workers from other countries prove more attractive to global organisations.
“Monolinguals can’t move round the European headquarters of multinational companies and pick up the kind of experience on their CVs that will get them into senior management positions,” he told The Sunday Times.
BMW supports its employees’ passion for languages by investing £150,000 a year in courses in German and cultural awareness at Hams Hall.
Like language expertise, cultural awareness is set to become an essential component in the business strategy of any company that is serious about exporting. It enables people to build rapid rapport with clients, and avoids the jaw-dropping social and business faux pas that destroy credibility — and lose deals — in a millisecond.
Alan Jenkins, chairman of Eversheds, the law firm, has used language and cultural training to help his company to grow from a mainly British operation to a 29-office, 15-country global enterprise in only five years. The company’s 4,500-strong workforce has almost doubled its international business and the number of American companies that it represents in the past three years.
“To be successful, you need to understand what makes people from other cultures tick,” said Jenkins, who speaks French, German and Spanish. He has invested £50,000 in training 500 partners and employees in language and cultural skills.
Eversheds and Hams Hall are role-model enterprises for a new Britain — one where enlightened firms speak and think in the customer’s language.
Business experts believe that, unless more companies adopt this attitude, Britain will slide rapidly down the league table of economic powers as people from more energetic nations — including China, India and Brazil — learn languages and cultural-awareness skills.
“We are living in an Anglo-Saxon ivory tower,” said Stirling Austin, a recruitment director who has launched Multilingual Executives, an agency that specialises in managers with language skills. “We’ll lose business within 10 years if we can’t talk the client’s language.”
