Language Etiquette in the Workplace
- Evelina Silveira
- 4 days ago
- 1 min read
10 Examples of Language Exclusion: Are You Giving These A Pass?
Evelina Silveira, President, Diversity at Work Communications Training
The topic of multilingual etiquette in the workplace is a rising, relevant, and global issue. In fact, the blog post I wrote over 10 years ago, “The Do’s and Don’ts of Using Foreign Languages in the Workplace,” has garnered over 15,000 international views across both my websites, with tremendous engagement. Readers of my blog have left comments citing specific situations across sectors where leaders often ignore or perpetuate language exclusion.
Segregated workplaces can have serious consequences, including poor morale, productivity issues, and possible legal issues. Becoming aware of and acting when you see exclusionary practices will help you manage a multilingual team.
It’s important to remember that each workplace has a dominant language for conducting business, and all employees should be proficient in it, but this is not always possible. Employees may be hired to fill labour gaps without knowing the language well enough to conduct operations entirely in the dominant language. At other times, they may default to their first language out of convenience or to keep conversations private. Similarly, dominant language speakers may also inadvertently or deliberately leave second-language speakers out of conversations.
To read more about how you can avoid typical leadership pitfalls.
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