What do these companies have in common?

• Daimler-Chrysler (Germany, United States)
• ITT Motion Technologies (Italy)
• Nissan (Japan)
• Nokia (Finland)
• Rakuten (Japan)
• Renault (France)
• Samsung (South Korea)
• Siemens (Germany)
• Sodexo (France)

These and many more companies have adopted English as the common corporate language, at least for the leaders and executives. The number of internationally operating companies that adopt English as their corporate language is said to be growing. And even if there is no official language policy, English is often the dominant language for communication internally because more and more companies have a workforce consisting of people from many different nationalities. As a BBC article states, English is... "the only language that everyone can generally speak in common – even if speaking doesn’t mean always fully understanding."

Leading by example

The French company Sodexo, after years of translating emails, webinars and other materials into eight languages, including French, English and Spanish, or holding massive town-hall meetings in multiple languages, announced early 2017 that its senior leadership team would be embracing English. At the end of this year (2017), the leadership teams that are responsible for Sodexo's 500,000 employees across 80 countries will have switched to English-only.

At the Japanese company Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani also shows the way. But he has also made clear that there are no other options for all Rakuten employees than to follow the leaders. Mikitani has made clear that employees will have to demonstrate competence on an international English scoring system within two years after the corporate choice to switch to English—or risk demotion or even dismissal.

At French Sodexo the change is primarily for the company’s 200 executives and its 1,600 senior leaders, lower level staffers, many of who don’t speak English, will continue to receive communications in different languages.

Still, that may change at some point, too. As well, materials might be translated into fewer languages in future.
“It’s an absolute must that we move to English,” says Kim Beddard-Fontaine, Sodexo’s group vice-president of employee and change communication

Coporate advantage

Rakuten has been able to create a remarkably diverse and powerful organization. In 2012 already, three out of six senior executives at the company weren’t Japanese; they didn’t even speak Japanese. Without the switch to English as the corporate language this had not been possible.

Sodexo's Beddard-Fontaine.about the corporate benefits of the choice for English: “Business are organised globally and not regionally these days,” she says. “We want to become more efficient by collaborating across geographies. English is an enabler of that.”

Airbus Group CEO and President Fabrice Brégier: “Airbus’s language is English. I’m not going to tell you that when there are two French people in my office we speak in English, but we systematically speak English, emails are in English," Bregier said.

"My American and British colleagues have to constantly put up with bad English.”

Brégier sees the mix of cultures that has made English the company’s common language as a positive thing. “This is an incredible strength. Merged together we are much stronger than being only French, all British or all American. I’m sure of it,” he said.

Career and personal benefits

Research has consistently demonstrated that professionals with an advanced English proficiency are more likely to advance their careers. A strong command of the English language is said to lead to higher paying jobs, more social mobility, and more social success. On the hiring side at international corporations it is known that strong communication skills improve business performance.They therefore require a certain level of English before they’ will consider hiring certain professionals. Many multinational companies map required levels of English proficiency to certain job roles and career progression.

Also there are advantages of learning a second (or 3rd etc) language in general. An Economist article writes about the (financial) bonus of learning a second language but there are also unexpected benefits of speaking more than one language, like improving decisionmaking and preventing dementia.

Do you have a personal language strategy?