Enhancing workplace communication: The new role of language assessments in business success

Andrew Khan
two business people sat together in a meeting both looking at a laptop
Reading time: 4 minutes

The integration of AI tools into workplaces around the world is starting to change the way people communicate professionally. that the use of AI to help draft documents and emails is driven not only by convenience and efficiency but also by a desire to be clear and precise in language.

While potentially useful, tools to translate, generate, or ‘correct’ written text won’t help with the effectiveness of the verbal communication that powers business relationships.

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The importance of effective communication

Whether it’s customer support calls, sales presentations, health and safety instructions or day-to-day engagement with colleagues, our personal and professional interactions in the workplace rely on our ability to understand and be understood.

Equally, clarity of communication is central to many of the ‘future skills’ that employers have identified as critical to sustained success – notably .

It can be challenging for people who have English as a first language to feel confident in these skills – and even more difficult for those who may use another language at home but are required to speak English at work.

Challenges faced by second-language English speakers

When designing assessments that measure English proficiency, we need to balance the convenience and duration that enable them to fit into a fast-paced hiring workflow with the coverage that gives businesses confidence in the results. This means focusing on the most essential elements of effective communication.

Introducing the Versant by ɫèAV English Speaking and Listening Test

With the new Versant by ɫèAV English Speaking and Listening Test, we take just seventeen minutes to give a comprehensive picture of communicative English competence. So where do we focus?

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Effective verbal communication: Balancing listening and speaking skills

As a starting point, the businesses that we heard from in our research were clear that listening is just as important a skill as speaking when it comes to making hiring decisions.

Anyone who has been through sales or customer support training in the past will likely be familiar with the phrase “you have one mouth but two ears,” meaning that, in a professional context, our ability to listen, actively and attentively, for detail and nuance, can be twice as valuable as speaking. A test that didn’t place equal weight on comprehension and productive speech when assessing communicative ability would be missing the mark.

Evolving expectations around speech

Our research also pointed to expectations around speech having shifted in recent years. The range of jobs where English is required at the point of hiring has increased in many countries – with professionals from taxi drivers to online tutors often asked to demonstrate communicative competence.

With this in mind, ɫèAV has introduced the Global Scale of English Job Profiles framework to help employers define appropriate English requirements for a variety of different positions.

Customer Support roles and communicative ability

Customer Support roles, historically the main use case for testing English in the workplace, are also evolving. Employers are placing a much greater emphasis on true communicative ability to help resolve complex problems rather than scripted or pre-prepared responses delivered with US-style accents.

Designing effective assessments

Taking this into account, we recognized a need to design a more effective way of testing both the manner of speaking and the content of that speech. Manner-of-speaking scores bring together the measurement of fluency or the fluidity and cohesion of a spoken response, pronunciation and intelligibility.

Pronunciation is different from accent – a test taker can have an Indian accent, a French accent or a Japanese accent and still pronounce English words in a way that first-language speakers will expect to hear them. Intelligibility reflects the reality that we all speak in different ways, with a voice authentic to ourselves, and looks to assess whether that voice can be easily understood by others.

Measuring communication skills

The most relevant measure of communication skills isn’t whether you sound like a fluent speaker but whether you can use your ability with language to convey meaning effectively. Our speech also needs to be relevant and appropriate, with suitable vocabulary and grammatical accuracy.

We’ve found the most successful way to measure speech content is to blend short questions with a limited set of potential responses with more open-ended items. This enables test takers to speak organically and really show what they can do with their language skills.

The value of fair and objective assessments

Whether used as a hiring tool, to diagnose employees' learning and development needs or to benchmark improvement over time, English assessments can be a great asset to businesses – but only if they’re fair, objective and laser-focused on the skills that underpin true communicative competence.

Join our webinar to learn more

Join us for an insightful webinar where we will delve deeper into the role of language assessments in enhancing workplace communication and driving business success. Sign up now to secure your spot and learn how the Versant by ɫèAV English Speaking and Listening Test can benefit your organization.

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References

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    showed that communication skills including English language skills are the most in-demand power skills across the board. PwC’s agrees: the top five predictors for employee turnover all had the same themes in common – communication, empathy and listening skills.

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    3 ways to implement English training to retain top talent

    Let’s explore three ways to implement an English language skills learning and development plan that underpins communication skills, refines business soft skills and makes your employees want to stay.

    1. Find out what training employees want

    To tailor a culture of learning that supports the development of your employees’ language and communication skills, you’ll find it helpful to get their input first. Survey and interview your team to better understand current barriers to language-specific learning, skills gaps, preferred learning styles and current frustrations.

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    2. Reward those who commit to language learning

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    What that looks like will differ from organization to organization, but it’s important that employees understand the potential opportunities that come with refining their language skills.

    3. Promote the link between language skills and career progression

    Your employees may not naturally make the link between developing language skills and career progression, so help them understand how better language skills can help them move forward in their role and how you will support them in this.

    When they see that language skills have been built into their development plans, they’ll feel invested in staying with your organization and developing their skills with you.

    In a world where communication-based soft skills are more valuable than ever before, the ability to confidently converse in different languages within a business context is an impressive skill that’s transferable to a multitude of other business soft skills, such as teamwork, leadership and problem-solving.

    Once they understand the full range of benefits that come with developing their language skills, they’ll be grateful that you’re committed to helping them do that and will be more likely to stay.

    Boost your workforce’s English language skills and reap the business benefits

    It’s clear that when employees feel that their communication skills are improving, they feel a sense of continued progression and engagement – not only in their language abilities but also across a range of other business power skills.

    The key to retaining talent lies in increasing engagement, and since higher engagement rates are linked to , according to Gallup, there really is no better way to retain a happy workforce.

    Start building your team’s English language skills

    Learn how Mondly by ɫèAV can help you reinforce a culture of learning and retain top talent within your organization, with flexible English language learning solutions for your business.

    If you liked this blog post and want to learn more,download the PDF report here.

    Find out more about how language training and assessment can drive your business forward by checking out our resources for HR professionals, including articles, whitepapers and research.