Why language and cultural differences matter in enterprise learning
When offering job-specific trainings, language is not always a crucial factor to make or break your success as an organisation. Of course, foreign employees will have a hard time to fully grasp the content if it’s not in their native tongue.
However, when it comes to learning it is more than just about languages – cultural differences also play an important role when working on your personal development. These cultural differences not only impact the experience of training, but they also impact the success of L&D programs in your company.
Education content should be localised, not translated
It's key to understand that your L&D content should not be translated, but localised. Translation could be considered as the process of changing your content into another language, but localisation is something completely different. The art of localisation includes the cultural, visual and technological aspects of changing educational content for learners in different languages. In fact, you should consider translation as a part of the localisation process.
With GoodHabitz online learning courses we make sure that all our content is localised according to the needs of your employees – regardless of their ethnicity, language, culture, or where they are located in the world.
As an example, the Swedish library is in Swedish with Swedish examples, and the Italian library in Italian with its own examples. We also ensure that countries that speak the same language have their own ring to it; our German speaking library is localised for both the German, Swiss and Austrian markets, all with their own cultural examples. Regardless of if your organisation is multinational, or if you have offices spread across the world – GoodHabitz is the one solution that fits all.
Type of courses differ per country
Cultural differences also mean differences in preference. In our 2021 year in review analysis, we could see that employees in the UK market preferred the courses I Feel Good, Good with Money and Time Management.
Whereas in France the courses Counting to 10 (Managing your emotions), My Turn, and Let Your Body Do the Talking made the top-list. Leadership courses topped the boards in Sweden and Spain, with courses such as Coaching and Leadership and Change Management ranking first.
So, which course do you want to see on the ranking boards in your country? We have listed some that we think would be a perfect fit for your managers and your organisation – but you can always dive into our library and see for yourself!
Integrate GoodHabitz into your global learning approach or LMS
Besides working with a platform that offers both language and cultural diversity, accessibility is also crucial to successfully offering personal development across borders. That's why most enterprises work with an LMS, a Learning Management System.
GoodHabitz also enables you to integrate our library into your LMS or learning environment. Combining your organisation’s existing industry and job-specific content, with our unique colourful online training courses, will make working on personal development even more motivating.
Already more than half of our customers use their own learning environment, so a proper integration is easy peasy lemon squeezy!
Stimulating personal development across country borders with the OTB Group
The OTB Group, also known as Only The Brave, is an international enterprise that includes well-known fashion brands such as Diesel, Maison Margiela, Marni, Viktor & Rolf and Jil Sandler. In 2021, the organisation started their collaboration with GoodHabitz with the focus on developing soft skills of their employees at the headquarters in Italy. Already after 2 months of the collaboration, OTB decided to extend the contract and offer the trainings across country borders – to all their offices worldwide. The HR department of OTB Group explains:
"The possibility of having a single partner, which would allow all employees to train through the same content and easily use the courses in multiple languages, immediately seemed very interesting to us."
For the global launch of GoodHabitz within the company, OTB decided to use a progressive approach where they gradually released the content of the library to their employees – creating curiosity before each release. They added: "Every month we send newsletters to communicate the release of added content on the platform.”
The great efforts in the launch gave good results and the employees of OTB became excited about learning – and all courses were received with just as much enthusiasm as the previous ones!
This article is part of our 'L&D Challenges & Solutions' blog series. In every article, we connect the challenge to a leading company that solved the challenge. We summarised all of them in this article. Want to read more inspirational stories from our clients? Check out our case studies!
