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It's a solved problem that remains unsolved for other reasons. I've seen this tried a bit and... not always a great success. Often a HR 'initiative' or management whim to buy a product or hire someone dedicated to this, but it's got to have management momentum. Take a call centre - easy to add into feedback, measure, monitor, should gel with on-the-job performance, the feedback often with a dedicated QA or QA team providing input. Take a (classic, bigorg) development team - not so much regular communication (spoken), and what there is gets stuffed into conference calls and [fake] 'scrums'. Those that already have good communication (and technical) skills do OK, those hired for technical skills (with language and softer skills taking a back seat, as when a role is created or becomes free then filling it with someone reasonably up-to-speed becomes the priority - I know this is setting yourself up to fail - and 'language' a long term improvement target - if someone's gone through 10 years+ of English language education I don't think 2 hours coaching per week, now with a fulltime job, perhaps getting married, social life, perhaps kids, other hobbies, is going to work but for all but the most committed). It's a solved problem. What's not solved is banging management head against the wall with (long term) bad-fit hires OR giving staff a proper amount of time (10 hours pr week, company time, personal time as they choose) to allow them to develop as a long term fit with the company. And on development conference calls - so so so many times dominated by someone in a position of seniority or more fluent language to the extent no one else gets a chance to get practice of making a substantial and cooperative (i.e. discuss, not just blast what's been done) contribution and having a discussion (going round "what's achieved, what are you doing, any roadblocks" doesn't count). |