http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61099-2004Sep4.html

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>"Multilingualism Is a Necessity In Many Jobs"
>By Rita Zeidner
>Special to The Washington Post
>Sunday, September 5, 2004; Page F01
>
>You won't find workers at Ram Javia's Dunkin' Donuts in Westminster, Md.,
>chatting behind the counter in their mother tongue, Gujarati.
>
>Gujarati is the dominant language of Gujarat state, on India's west coast,
>and it's the language Mahatma Gandhi used to communicate most of his
>doctrines on nonviolence. It's also the language most of the workers at
>the Carroll County doughnut shop, 60 miles north of the District, feel
>most comfortable speaking.
>
>But Javia has asked his staff to speak only English when customers are
>around. "If you speak in your native language in front of visitors, it's
>very rude," said Javia, himself an immigrant from India, who bought the
>Westminster franchise in 1997. Officials at Marriott International Inc.,
>the Bethesda-based hotel chain, agree.
>
>"We try to encourage workers to speak in English," said Luis Ortuna, human
>resources manager at the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, which, like
>most hotels, relies almost entirely on workers born outside the United
>States for housekeeping and other entry-level jobs. "Otherwise [guests]
>might think workers are talking about them." A draconian policy? Maybe,
>especially when imposed on workers who speak little or no English at the
>time they are brought on board.
>
>And yet a growing number of employers say this kind of crackdown is vital
>if they are going to stay in business.
>"We believe the type of worker we're hiring is very hard-working," Javia
>said. "But we need to upgrade their interpersonal skills."
>
>Addressing a Concern
>
>In May, a McDonald's employee struggling with English was the catalyst for
>one of Maryland Comptroller William Donald Schaefer's notorious public
>outbursts. The former mayor and state governor complained the worker had
>difficulty taking his order. After the incident, he vowed, publicly, not
>to return to the restaurant. "I don't want to adjust to another language,"
>Schaefer grumbled during a meeting of the state Board of Public Works,
>according to a transcript of the meeting published by the Baltimore Sun.
>"This is the United States. I think they ought to adjust to us."
>
>It's that kind of negative publicity that prompted the Chicago-based
>National Restaurant Association Education Foundation, the educational arm
>of the restaurant lobbying group, to launch a program for restaurant
>owners to address what is
>widely seen as the industry's Achilles' heel. It's not just an interest in
>appeasing fussy customers that's driving the initiative, said Mary Adolf,
>NRAEF's president. "We need to assure that these workers understand the
>procedures that are important for food safety and food consistency," she
>said. Many restaurateurs say traditional English as a Second Language
>(ESL) classes fall far short of their business needs. The cornerstone of
>the NRAEF initiative is the "language huddle" -- a series of short daily
>language lessons given to small groups of non-English-speaking employees
>at the workplace by one of their peers, said Nathan Johnson, project
>manager for Daily Dose Language System Inc. of Salt Lake City, which
>partnered with NRAEF to develop course materials. Each lesson is built
>around a theme, and each of the 52 modules can be taught in about 10
>minutes, Johnson said. Lessons cover such topics as hand-washing, food
>expiration dates, greeting
>customers and handling customer requests for condiments. "We're trying to
>make the classes fun and interactive," Johnson said. "It's not just verbs,
>conjugations and all those boring things you learn in school."
>
>The Westminster store, which began offering Daily Dose classes to workers
>five months ago, is one of 20 Dunkin' Donuts establishments around the
>country piloting the program.
>
>To lead the huddles, Javia turned to Darshi Patel, an ambitious
>19-year-old part-time employee and community college student who moved to
>the United States from India six years ago. For about a half-hour each
>day, workers alternate
>between spending time with Patel in the huddle and practicing what they've
>learned by waiting on customers. "They've been learning so well," Patel
>said of her co-worker pupils. "I will point to something like paper towels
>and I'll be like, 'What's this called?' and then they'll tell me."
>
>Shawn Brady, human resources director for Harman Management Corp., a large
>KFC franchisee that has been using Daily Dose in western states for two
>years, credits the program for motivating some of his most disaffected
>employees. "It really gets the workers' interest up," he said. "When I saw
>these 30-year-old cooks sitting down on bags of flour in the back getting
>interested in learning English, I had a huge emotional reaction." Daily
>Dose is what Kevin McNamara, vice president of franchises for Allied
>Domecq, the parent company for Dunkin' Donuts, Baskin-Robbins and Togos,
>calls a "low- tech" approach to language training. In addition, the
>company plans to install computers that access English tutorial
>programs in all Dunkin' Donuts establishments. "You wouldn't normally
>think of a Dunkin' Donuts store as a center of high-tech learning," he
>said. "But I see this as something we offer on an ongoing basis. This is
>not a flavor-of-the-month
>program."
>
>At Marriott, ESL is still taught the old-fashioned way. At times, the
>company has hired instructors to teach at various properties, keeping
>workers on the clock while they attend class. Workers who opt to take ESL
>classes off-site can receive tuition reimbursement.
>
>Ortuna, a native of Bolivia who knew little English when he began at the
>hotel as a housekeeper 13 years ago, said that's how he mastered the
>language and rose into management. Ortuna remembers what it was like when
>he couldn't understand what his English-speaking co-workers were saying.
>"It made me feel like I didn't fit in, like I didn't belong," he said.
>"But now I do." Memories of these outsider feelings make Ortuna favor the
>Marriott policy of discouraging worker chat in languages other than
>English in front of guests.
>
>Building engineer Luz Sorto is another Marriott success story. Limited to
>a few English phrases such as "Good morning" and "Good night" when she was
>hired as a housekeeper at the Key Bridge Marriott in 1992, she also took
>the classes Marriott sponsored. "I am very loyal to the company," she
>said. "They paid me to learn English. I wouldn't want to work anywhere else."
>
>Training Trainers
>
>But some employers maintain that teaching workers English doesn't make
>sense -- in part because demographics are shifting. They think the
>training should go in the opposite direction. With the Spanish-speaking
>population growing at nearly four times the rate of the general
>population, Target Corp., headquartered in Minneapolis, began offering
>free Spanish language
>classes to managers in Maryland and Virginia two years ago. The
>geographically limited pilot was so popular that beginning this month
>managers in all 1,200 stores in 47 states can study the language of
>Cervantes while at work via classes beamed over Target's intranet.
>Managers won't be required to learn Spanish, but doing so "is encouraged,"
>said company spokeswoman Carolyn Brookter. "It really has to do with
>serving our guests," she said. "It's a way to get them to feel
>comfortable at our store." In addition, Brookter said, managers will need
>Spanish-language skills to keep the company
>competitive as an employer. "You have to be able to communicate with your
>workers," she said, noting that the company has
>no plans to teach English to workers who speak only Spanish or to teach
>languages other than Spanish to managers.
>
>J. David Edwards, executive director of the Joint National Committee for
>Languages, a D.C. language-skills policy group, maintains that
>second-language training for managers isn't common enough to be described
>as a trend. But it's something he's keeping an eye on. "You can sell more
>widgets to someone in their language than you can in yours," he said. In
>addition, it's increasingly common for companies to have a
>Spanish-speaking manager on board to help keep watch over worker safety,
>particularly on construction sites that have a high concentration of
>workers who speak only Spanish.
>"To be able to say 'Cuidado' ['Be careful' in Spanish] may be very
>important to keep someone from getting a brick on the head," Edwards said.
>
>Jack Duley, a health and risk manager for Clark Construction Group in
>Bethesda, said the company has trained several native English-speaking
>managers to speak Spanish. But it is more common for the company to hire
>bilingual Hispanic
>workers for its health and safety jobs.
>
>There are tools other than classes and huddles.
>Sodexho Inc., a Gaithersburg company that relies mostly on
>Spanish-speaking workers to staff its cafeterias and provide laundry and
>housekeeping services, has developed a set of Spanish-English flashcards
>featuring words and phrases not part
>of a traditional language curriculum. Among them, "It stinks" and
>"recycling." The cards are used by managers and staff to
>communicate, said Leslie Aun, a Sodexho vice president.
>
>At Sibley Memorial Hospital in the District, where Sodexho oversees
>cleaning and bed-making services, workers are shown instructional videos
>-- with voice-overs in Spanish and English -- covering a range of
>procedures, including the handling of infectious materials and working
>with hazardous chemicals. "We do a lot of show and tell," said Robert
>Jewell, Sodexho's director of environmental services. "And then we show
>and tell again so that basic communication isn't an issue.
>Repetition is very big around here."
>
>Carolyn Harris, one of the few native English speakers on Sibley's
>housekeeping staff, said being in the language minority hasn't gotten in
>her way. "Most of the time I can understand what [co-workers] are trying
>to tell me," she said. "I think I understand them very well."
>
>And sometimes workers just take matters into their own hands.
>
>Carlos Figueroa, a maintenance crew member at Fairlington Villages in
>Arlington, said he relies on pointing and other hand signals to indicate
>when something's not right. Though he is fluent in both Spanish and
>English, from time to time he finds himself at a loss when trying to
>communicate with employees who speak Arabic and Korean. His work-team
>partner, Aron Jones, said he has resorted to drawing pictures in the dirt
>to get his point across.
>
>"You can get people to understand you if you really try," Jones said. "And
>that way, it's a lovely day."
>© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Nearby dom 05 sep 2004 20:58:44 AST