Crisis Guru

In his Crisis Guru Commentaries, Jim Lukaszewski provides real answers to real questions about your most critical communications problems and issues.

This issue was triggered by the question below.

To submit a question, please direct it by e-mail to crisisguru@e911.com. Be sure to include your full name, affiliation, address, and telephone number. All published questions will be identified by title and industry only. Your confidentiality will be protected.

Question:

Dear Crisis Guru:

We operate a Q&A Dialogue Web site for our employees. We post virtually everything employees send us and develop answers. Recently, an employee posted a complaint that there was too much "speaking Spanish around the office." The employee was concerned that he/she did not understand what was going on. The question the employee asked was, "Shouldn't there be a policy of English-only in the work place? Who is responsible for making this happen?”

Our question is, how do we respond to this circumstance without either seeming insensitive or racist. We're really in the middle on this. It's a highly flammable question as we are based in the Southwest where so many companies are very heavily Spanish speaking.

Any help you can provide will be appreciated.

Communicator

Answer:

Dear Communicator:

The Spanish language is the most rapidly growing language spoken America, although business is universally conducted in English. I would fashion a response along these lines:

Emphasize the tolerance we exhibit toward cultural differences. This is America, a nation of many cultures and many languages.
As a company policy, when speaking about business operational matters, English is the language that should be used. When talking with our customers, English should be used unless the customer is known to speak or prefer to speak in another language. For any other conversation in the workplace, or elsewhere, speaking the employee’s native language is perfectly acceptable.
In emergency response, of course, it always has to be English, simply because that is the language almost everyone will be working in. It is also the language of the media, the language of the Web, and the language of emergencies and emergency response.

Hope this helps,

Jim Lukaszewski




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CRISIS GURU #30 Real Time Answers to Real Time Questions In his Crisis Guru Commentaries, Jim Lukaszewski provides real answers to real questions about your most critical communications problems and issues. This issue was triggered by the question below. To submit a question, please direct it by e-mail to crisisguru@e911.com. Be sure to include your full name, affiliation, address, and telephone number. All published questions will be identified by title and industry only. Your confidentiality will be protected. TODAY’S TOPIC: ENGLISH-ONLY POLICY IN THE WORK PLACE Question: Dear Crisis Guru: We operate a Q&A Dialogue Web site for our employees. We post virtually everything employees send us and develop answers. Recently, an employee posted a complaint that there was too much "speaking Spanish around the office." The employee was concerned that he/she did not understand what was going on. The question the employee asked was, "Shouldn't there be a policy of English-only in the work place? Who is responsible for making this happen?” Our question is, how do we respond to this circumstance without either seeming insensitive or racist. We're really in the middle on this. It's a highly flammable question as we are based in the Southwest where so many companies are very heavily Spanish speaking. Any help you can provide will be appreciated. Communicator Answer: Dear Communicator: The Spanish language is the most rapidly growing language spoken America, although business is universally conducted in English. I would fashion a response along these lines: Emphasize the tolerance we exhibit toward cultural differences. This is America, a nation of many cultures and many languages. As a company policy, when speaking about business operational matters, English is the language that should be used. When talking with our customers, English should be used unless the customer is known to speak or prefer to speak in another language. For any other conversation in the workplace, or elsewhere, speaking the employee’s native language is perfectly acceptable. In emergency response, of course, it always has to be English, simply because that is the language almost everyone will be working in. It is also the language of the media, the language of the Web, and the language of emergencies and emergency response. Hope this helps, Jim Lukaszewski
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