Why your performance management strategy needs language learning

Samantha Ball
Two business people both looking at a computer screen, gesturing and smiling.

The modern workplace is constantly evolving and undergoing a paradigm shift in performance management. The focus is now on fostering a culture of continuous learning and development, rather than merely holding employees accountable. It is particularly important to prioritize this shift when it comes to enhancing language and communication skills within your team.

It is important to connect performance management with language learning goals, as English skills are highly valued by both employees and businesses.

Performance management strategies and language learning
Play
Privacy and cookies

By watching, you agree app can share your viewership data for marketing and analytics for one year, revocable by deleting your cookies.

Get in touch to find out how we can support your organization's language needs

Identifying a gap

So, you have identified a lack of English language proficiency within your team, and want to implement a performance management plan for the professional development of your staff.Now let’s look at how you can use your performance management system to effectively address this gap and support employees in their career advancement.

1. Map individual learning goals to business needs

It is important to understand your business's needs and aims before setting language learning goals. You need to determine whether you want to improve skills like technical written English for documents, spoken English for customer service, or prepare your team for a new market.

By aligning individual language learning goals with business priorities, your performance management plan becomes a strategic tool that benefits both employees and the overall business.

Example: Make your customer service more effective by improving the team’s spoken English.

2. Understand employees' language learning needs

To get an idea about your team's current language proficiency and personal preferences, you can conduct surveys and individual interviews. By gathering information about their confidence levels, preferred learning styles, and objectives, you can create a customized language learning plan that motivates them to achieve their goals. This approach ensures that your team members actively participate in shaping their language development. One way to evaluate language proficiency is by using assessments such as Versant tests.

Example: Build your employees’ confidence when doing workplace tasks, such as presenting in English, by expanding their business English vocabulary.

3. Fair performance management

An effective performance management system is crucial for achieving success in any organization. It is essential that managers possess the necessary tools and expertise to provide unbiased appraisals. In the context of language learning, this means ensuring that all employees have equal access to opportunities for developing their Workplace English skills.

A positive and supportive work culture encourages managers to conduct appraisals that contribute to the growth and development of all team members.

Example: Offer Business English skills development to every employee.

4. Regularly monitor progress

Language skills require consistent practice, making continuous feedback essential. Conduct baseline skill assessments using tools like Versant by app and complement them with interactive language learning platforms like Mondly by app. Establish a continuous feedback loop to monitor progress and set realistic goals for employees, using each performance review as an opportunity to review and refine language learning objectives.

Example: Improve your team’s language retention with daily practice in the Mondly by app app.

Workplace language program checklist

Use this checklist to ensure that progress is being measured effectively and that the corporate language program is suited to the business and your employees’ language needs.

  1. Are individual language learning goals aligned with business priorities?
  2. Do managers feel equipped and supported to deliver fair and effective appraisals?
  3. Is suitable and progressive learning technology in place to support the learning process?
  4. Is progress monitored and assessed all year round?

Integrating language learning into your performance management system is a strategic investment. It benefits both your employees' development and the success of your business. By aligning individual goals with business needs, understanding your team's preferences, ensuring fairness in appraisals, and maintaining continuous monitoring, you can create a performance management system. This system addresses language skills gaps and also fosters a culture of perpetual learning and improvement.

Not sure where to start for your organization? app offers language learning solutions for work to help boost your employee's language skills.

Want to learn more? Read the long-form article for more or explore our language learning and assessment tools for businesses.

You might also be interested in our post 'Language proficiency and succession planning: Developing future leaders'

app Language learning solutions for Work

More blogs from app

  • Children sat outdoors reading a book together

    Why should you use storytelling to teach English?

    By Richard Cleeve
    Reading time: 5 minutes

    Stories can make us laugh, cry or tremble with fear. They can teach us valuable life lessons and transport us to other worlds. They've been around since the beginning of language itself, but can they actually help us learn a language?

    Stories are one of the most useful toolswhen teaching childrenEnglish. Not only do they help with listening and reading skills, but they can also support speaking and writing skills by providing context, language and structure.

    Very young learners may already be familiar with stories – they may hear them in daycare, school or at home with their parents. Therefore, incorporating these into their language classes may help them to feel more comfortable in their surroundings. And if children feel comfortable, they are more likely to be receptive to learning.

    Storytelling usually happens as part of a group in the classroom. This means that it becomes a bonding activity for children where they can communicate and subconsciously pick up the key language. While having fun listening and interacting with the story, theysoak up information without even realizing they’re learning.

    So, what storytelling activities can we use with younglearners? Let’s find out.

    Practical activities for storytelling with young learners

    Often, we think of storytelling simply as reading a book aloud to children. Yet, there are other activities you can do. These include:

    1. Choral repetition

    To get young children interacting with the story, first read out a sentence alone. Then, have the children repeat the line with you as a group. Repeat as many times as necessary, until the children feel confident with the language.

    2. Individual repetition

    If your learners are happy to, ask them individually to repeat the sentence after you. Make sure each one has a turn and praise them for being brave and trying to use the language.

    3. Play acting

    An activity that works well with children is to act out the story’s characters. For example, there may be animals, fairies, monsters or other exciting characters that they can each act.

    Ask them to make the noises of the animals, the wind, or the scenery to create an atmosphere while you read. This gets them interacting with the story and the rest of the group, which will help their communication and listening comprehension skills.

    4. Use puppets or dolls

    Young learners react particularly well to visual aids and realia. Why not use puppets or dolls to act out the characters, or even ask students to have a go with them? They will engage more with the story and the language.

    5. Dive into the pictures

    Children’s story books are usually quite visual with illustrations and pictures. Make the most of these while telling the story. Try asking students questions about the images to get them using the vocabulary.

    You could ask them, “what can you see?”, “what’s he wearing?” or “can you find an apple?”. This is another great way to reinforce the vocabulary they’re learning in class.

    Use these activities individually orincorporate a mix into your lessons. Either way, storytelling will help your learners with more than just developing their English language skills.

    Storytelling with adult language learners

    While we often think of storytelling as a pastime for children, it can also be a useful language learning activity for adults.

    Stories are part of our daily lives, from news to social media to books and movies. Therefore, they can be extremely beneficial tools for English language learning.

    Yet, the way we approach storytelling as a class activity for adults differs to that of young learners. While we typically read fairy tales to young children, we can bring in a much wider range of content for adults, such as:

    • News stories– There may be a current news story that learners are interested in. Ask them to bring in an article to retell in class.
    • Traditional folk stories–Ask learners what traditional folk tales or ghost stories they were told as children growing up in their hometowns. This can be really interesting for both language and cultural awareness.
    • Personal life stories – Our lives are a series of short stories that can make for very interesting reading. You can either ask students to share stories in class orally or have them write up a “chapter” from their lives to tell the class. It could be something funny that happened to them or an anecdote from their childhood, for example.
    • Movie plots– Ask students what their favorite movies are and have them either tell the group the summary of the plot or write it up to share at the end of the lesson.
    • Advertisements–There are some fantastic advertisements which tell mini stories in under three minutes. Have students choose one, show it to the class and discuss it as a group.

    Storytelling can be a wonderful language learning tool for both children and adults. If you’re looking for a new way to engage, inspire and motivate your learners, why not try it in your next class?

  • A woman standing at a whiteboard in a office with two others sat down.

    How to bring soft skills into the business English classroom

    By Richard Cleeve

    Anyone who’s ever taught a business English class knows that their students are busy people. Sometimes they get sidetracked by their other tasks - even during class. This means we have to make the most of the time we have with our learners and focus on what they really need.

    How you do this depends on the sector your students work in (or plan to work in), their previous experiences studying English and their own strengths and weaknesses.

    Teachers often focus on teaching hard skills, such as writing reports or running meetings. We do this because it can be challenging for many business students to do these things in English and also because hard skills have an immediate and positive impact on their workdays.

    But, if there’s one thing that all business people can benefit from, it’s soft skills.

    Soft skills are interpersonal or people skills. They include things like active listening, teamwork, decision-making and influencing skills. Mastering these skills will help students progress more rapidly and become more independent learners. However, isolating the specific vocabulary or grammar structures that these skills use is complex and they often get overlooked in language learning classes as a result.

  • Two students sat on stairs smiling at a laptop

    How to keep your students motivated during summer intensive courses

    By Richard Cleeve

    Summer is here and so are English language intensive courses. Adults and teens are lining up at your classroom doors, full of enthusiasm and ready to learn English. But soon they’re staring out the windows, looking up at the bright blue skies and wishing they were on the beach, or - frankly - doing anything but studying English for the next 100 hours.

    So how can you turn it around and keep your learners on track and motivated this summer?