[encom]

>clarity of communications

I (native dane) work in robotics. Our company has a disproportionate amount of non-danes employed, who also are not native english speakers. I've been reading and writing english since I was very young, but having almost never spoken it makes face-to-face communication challenging. And not only that, but I encounter colleagues conversing in Hindi, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Greek etc. Any of those conversations is one I'm locked out of, and unable to contribute to. It's really a Tower Of Babel type of situation here. Effective communication is a frustrating chore, especially since we're talking about highly technical subjects. Upper management thinks our diversity is a strength, but I'm just not seeing it from where I'm sitting.

In my next job, this is a situation I will seek to avoid.

[m_eiman]

> I encounter colleagues conversing in Hindi, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Greek etc. Any of those conversations is one I'm locked out of, and unable to contribute to.

This is really rude of them, and it's something management should work very hard to fix. Because as you say, in addition to being rude it's terribly inefficient for the company. If they employ people from all over the world, they should probably mandate English as the only allowed language in just about any situation.

If you have speakers of different languages in a conversation or group, it's just common sense to use a language everyone can understand and use.

Yes, it's easier for Danes to speak Danish when four out of five in the group understand it, but standing around there being the fifth person who can't understand a word of what's being said is not a nice experience.

[constantcrying]

>And not only that, but I encounter colleagues conversing in Hindi, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Greek etc. Any of those conversations is one I'm locked out of, and unable to contribute to.

I had that happen on occasion, every time it felt pretty exclusionary and somewhat rude, so I tried to always speak in english if that was the only common language among people tangentially involved in a conversation.

But even that is certainly not ideal, it has been pretty clear to me that, even though I have absolutely no problem speaking and understanding English, talking to a native speaker in my native language leads to much quicker and clearer communication.