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D1.2 BUSINESS SECTOR REPORTS ON COMPANIES LANGUAGE NEEDS

RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION AND OTHER SERVICES SECTORS

Project Title: CELAN Project Type: Network Project Programme: LLP KA2 Project No: 196466-LLP-1-2010-1-BE-KA2-KA2PLA Author report: EUCA The CELAN network project has been funded with support from the European Commission, LLP programme, KA2. This communication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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Contents

1. Introduction: who filled the questionnaire ...........................................................3 2. Analysis of the questionnaire .............................................................................4

2.1 The respondents' language experience regarding business use.........................4

2.2. The Language Needs of Businesses...............................................................8 3. Conclusions ....................................................................................................10

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1. Introduction: who filled the questionnaire This report on Retail & Distribution and Other Services sectors summarises the results gathered from the consultation carried out as part of the EU-financed project CELAN - Language Strategies for Competitiveness and Employability, and from the data analysis made by EURASHE, also partner in the project. In the Retail & Distribution sector fall high street shops, wholesale, supply logistics services, ports or airports, while the Other Services sectors cover the insurance sector, medical & veterinary services, transport services, tourism and hospitality, education services, home assistance services, security, postal services or creative industries. The sample size for these sectors is 175 questionnaires, meaning 34% of the total respondents. If we want to further differentiate, there are 37 responses under the Retail & Distribution sector and 146 responses under the Other Services sector. These results allow a qualitative analysis of the sector’s needs. The geographical coverage of the consultation includes the 27 Member States of the European Union, but also Norway and Switzerland.

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2. Analysis of the questionnaire

2.1 Respondents’ language experience regarding business use 89% of respondents consider that knowledge of a foreign language matters for the operation and competitiveness of their enterprise. The remaining 11% explained their answer with the fact that they either operate only on the national market, either they outsource when language skills are needed. This result in the Retail & Distribution and Other Services is consistent with the overall answers received in the consultation in all sectors (Multi-sector Business Representative Organisations, the ICT sector, agro-industries, and manufacturing).

Fig.1 Q15: "Does the knowledge of foreign languages in your enterprise matter for its

operation or its competitiveness on the market? "

Asked if they thought the situation might change over the next few years, 53% of the respondents said no, while 47% said yes.

Fig. 2 – Q18: May it change?

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Regarding the language use inside companies – see Fig. 3, the consultation showed a clear preference of the Retail & Distribution and Other Services sectors for business interaction with partners (60%) and customers (58%). The lower percentage of the use of foreign languages is connected to headquarters abroad (47%), suppliers (44%) and human resources (42%) and might be explained with the predominance in the European Economic Area of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises that do not have to interact with headquarters abroad or with a human resources department.

The next question, about the in-house skills enterprises provide to their employees, showed that only 37% of the businesses interviewed offered language training, while 61% choose to recruit staff with existing language skills or to recruit directly native speakers (23%). This marks a clear preference of businesses towards employees with previous knowledge of foreign languages, affecting thus positively the employability of foreign language trained job seekers. Question number 20 asked how important is the command of a foreign language when recruiting staff at 4 different staff levels: management, technicians, shop floor, and “other categories”. Results showed that at management level, 63% of the respondents considered it important, while the other 3 levels scored low figures: only 16% respondents considered language skills matter when hiring technicians, 10% for shop floor and 32% for other categories. The motivation behind the use of foreign languages in the Retail & Distribution and the Other Services sectors resides mainly in economic reasons (53%) and cultural reasons (45%), while businesses that use foreign languages for quality reasons are 30% of the respondents. Compared to other business sectors taken into consideration in this survey, the retail sector does not give as much economic value to language use as the ICT sector in which 71% of the respondents use foreign languages for

Fig. 3 – Q16: Where does knowledge of foreign languages matter in the enterprise?

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economic reasons or the Agro-Industries and Manufacturing Industry, which has a 68% figure.

Despite the importance of foreign languages for their business, as shown in the answers to the first questions of the survey, 74% of the respondents gave a negative answer at the question whether they have a formal language development policy in their enterprise.

Question 23, asked businesses from Retail & Distribution and Other Services sectors to rate the most common language tools, in order to evaluate their usefulness. Rates could vary from 1 to 5, starting from 1- least useful, up to 5 - the most useful. The results show a preference towards easily accessible and free language tools like computer assisted spell checks and dictionaries (54%), automatic on-line translation tools (23%), while highly professional and technical tools such as multilingual glossaries of technical terms or terminology databases are less used: 19% respectively 18%. Computer assisted and/or machine translation and the Common European Framework for Languages gathered even a lower percentage: 13% respectively 12%.

Fig. 4 Q23: How useful are the following language tools to your business?

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Using the same evaluation method, respondents were asked to rate the importance of language services. As fig. 5 shows bellow, overall language services are less used by businesses than language tools. The most used services are translation and language courses for staff, but with a 28%, respectively 22% share, it means that these services are not widespread among respondents. Relatively important are also communication services in relation to the linguistic corporate web presence which 23% of the businesses interview found useful for their activity, most probably for business interaction with clients and partners.

The next question asked businesses whether they prefer or not certified language service providers. 46% of the respondents said they prefer certified language providers, while 30% said they didn’t know and 10% answered to be indifferent towards them. The last question in this Section, question 26, was aimed to find out how informed businesses are on the services provided by the language industry. Respondents had to rate their knowledge of the services offered by the language industry with one of the options of excellent, good, fair and poor. The results showed that 6% rate their knowledge about language industry excellent, 36% good, 31% fair and 11% poor.

Fig. 5 Q24: How useful are the following language services to your business?

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2.2. The Language Needs of Businesses

According to the respondents of the Retail & Distribution and Other Services sectors, the business activities where languages are required are: attending business meetings (62%), maintaining international relations (56%), using multilingual communications (47%), presenting the company, products and services (45%), interacting socially with customers and suppliers (45%) and preparing communication material (40%). Other figures can be seen below – fig. 6.

Asked what is the frequency of the use of foreign languages needs in their enterprise, over a half of the respondents (53%) answered they used them on a continuous basis, while 16% said to do it recurrently. Only 11% use foreign languages occasionally. As far as which languages are most needed, the respondents had to chose between “Other EU country languages”, “Direct neighbouring EU country’s languages”, “Neighbouring extra-EU country languages” or “Oriental Languages”. Fig. 7 shows below that there is a clear preference towards languages from EU countries, while contrary to common expectations other foreign languages, namely oriental, score a very low result, 3%.

Fig. 6: Q27: In what specific business activities you commonly have to perform are foreign languages required?

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Fig. 7: Q29: Which languages do you need most?

The next question went in further depth to evaluate the use of foreign languages by businesses of the sectors considered for analysis: respondents were asked to indicate language skills needed at staff level in the company and how are these skills used. The results showed with a high percentage which varied between 58%-61% a clear need for staff at management level to have language skills in all fields: spoken interaction, writing, speaking, reading and listening. As for technicians, the results are considerably lower: only 26% of businesses interviewed considered to be necessary for technicians to have spoken interaction language skills, for 29% of the respondents important were the writing and the speaking skills. Considerably higher, at 44%, companies thought that technicians should have reading skills in foreign languages. Even lower figures, from 17% to 26%, showed that few businesses expect also shop floor staff to have language skills. But compared to other sectors, mainly ICT and Agro-Industries sectors, the Retail & Distribution and Other Services sectors has the highest score, 24%, in spoken interaction given the nature of the interaction with clients. The final questions assessed the interest in a central web-based information point for language strategies for businesses. The Retail & Distribution and Other Services sectors declared to have a fair interest in this point (38%), or a modest one (36%), while only 19% said to be highly interested in such a tool. But when asked whether they were interested in receiving a synthesis report on the findings of this survey, the overall results on the total sample of 543 were positive: 63% agreed to receive the report, while the remaining 37% declined.

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3. Conclusions From the sample size of 175 questionnaires we can draw a qualitative analysis of the businesses’ needs in the European Economic Area regarding the Retail & Distribution and Other Services sectors. Around 69% of the answers showed that businesses use foreign languages frequently and mainly at management level. Mostly used are European languages, either of a neighboring country, either another European language, which in most cases is English. Businesses use language for interaction, be it with customers, suppliers or other partners and they do it mainly for economic and cultural reasons. The most common activities that require knowledge of foreign languages are: attending meetings and maintaining international relations. When using language tools, businesses prefer accessible and free tools like computer assisted spell checks or dictionaries. As for language services, businesses prefer translation, language courses for staff and communication services related to the web presence of the company. Considering that the majority of respondents, 89%, recognize the importance of foreign languages for the competitiveness of their enterprise, but also that 74% of them admitted to have no formal language strategy in place, there is much scope for the CELAN project to provide a useful platform for business to develop such strategies tailored to their the specific needs. This can be confirmed also by the interest of the companies that agreed to receive a synthesis report of the project or declared their interest in a central web-based information point.