3 ways to boost employee retention with language learning

Samantha Ball
 A group of business people clapping their hands
Reading time: 4 minutes

Did you know? According to our research, employees who work for a company that provides English language training are more thantwice as likelyto say they are very satisfied at work, compared to those working in companies that do not.

To retain top talent in an increasingly competitive marketplace, all evidence points to developing communication and language skills.

Communication: the most in-demand business skill

showed that communication skills including English language skills are the most in-demand power skills across the board. PwC’s agrees: the top five predictors for employee turnover all had the same themes in common – communication, empathy and listening skills.

According to , a focus on developing employees’ strengths (as opposed to focusing on fixing weaknesses) can lead to a 20-73% reduction in employee attrition. That’s a startling statistic and one that has the potential to transform your business.

So, the message is clear: by investing in your employees’ existing communication and language strengths, you’re helping them refine a comprehensive range of business power skills. In turn, this will make them feel more engaged and therefore far more likely to stay with you.

3 ways to implement English training to retain top talent

Let’s explore three ways to implement an English language skills learning and development plan that underpins communication skills, refines business soft skills and makes your employees want to stay.

1. Find out what training employees want

To tailor a culture of learning that supports the development of your employees’ language and communication skills, you’ll find it helpful to get their input first. Survey and interview your team to better understand current barriers to language-specific learning, skills gaps, preferred learning styles and current frustrations.

For example, is it speaking, listening or reading English that they currently struggle with the most? The better you understand your employees’ needs, the more consulted and engaged with the process they’ll feel.

2. Reward those who commit to language learning

In 2023, Forbes outlined , and perhaps unsurprisingly, reward featured strongly. Your performance management system should include a structure that acknowledges employees who are committing to achieving their objectives and developing their skills, and demonstrates the career trajectory that might be possible with improved communication and language skills.

What that looks like will differ from organization to organization, but it’s important that employees understand the potential opportunities that come with refining their language skills.

3. Promote the link between language skills and career progression

Your employees may not naturally make the link between developing language skills and career progression, so help them understand how better language skills can help them move forward in their role and how you will support them in this.

When they see that language skills have been built into their development plans, they’ll feel invested in staying with your organization and developing their skills with you.

In a world where communication-based soft skills are more valuable than ever before, the ability to confidently converse in different languages within a business context is an impressive skill that’s transferable to a multitude of other business soft skills, such as teamwork, leadership and problem-solving.

Once they understand the full range of benefits that come with developing their language skills, they’ll be grateful that you’re committed to helping them do that and will be more likely to stay.

Boost your workforce’s English language skills and reap the business benefits

It’s clear that when employees feel that their communication skills are improving, they feel a sense of continued progression and engagement – not only in their language abilities but also across a range of other business power skills.

The key to retaining talent lies in increasing engagement, and since higher engagement rates are linked to , according to Gallup, there really is no better way to retain a happy workforce.

Start building your team’s English language skills

Learn how Mondly by app can help you reinforce a culture of learning and retain top talent within your organization, with flexible English language learning solutions for your business.

If you liked this blog post and want to learn more,download the PDF report here.

Find out more about how language training and assessment can drive your business forward by checking out our resources for HR professionals, including articles, whitepapers and research.

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    How do different motivations change how students learn English?

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    Students all over the globe learn English for many reasons. Some of these motivations may come from the students themselves – perhaps they are learning because they are travelling to an English-speaking area, or they want to be able to converse with English-speaking friends and colleagues. Other reasons for learning could include meeting school requirements, studying abroad, or progressing their careers.

    As well as different reasons to learn English, there are also different goals. Many students are still focused on becoming fluent in English, and we are seeing an increase in people who want to learn the language for specific reasons. For example, immersing themselves in a particular culture or simply being able to order from a menu while travelling abroad.

    Teachers are focusing on these personal needs to help students achieve their actual goals. It’s likely you’ve already spoken to your students about why they want to learn English. Understanding this is important as different motivations can influence a student’s attitude towards learning the language – and it may be necessary for you to adapt your teaching strategies for different groups of learners.

    Teaching English to different groups of learners

    Let’s meet some different groups of students, learn a little more about their motivations and explore whether different motivations alter how students learn English. You may recognise some of these learners in your classes.

    1. Adult learners

    These students are learning English for pleasure or personal reasons. It might be because of travel, social or family reasons or perhaps because a better grasp of English might assist them with their careers. There are also adult learners who could be learning English as an immigration requirement.

    For example, 23-year-old Alice decided to learn English so she could meet people and have more meaningful interactions with her English-speaking neighbours. She says: “I was very shy and not very confident in speaking to people, but learning English helped me connect with others and meet new people. I have changed a lot.”

    A motivation like Alice’s requires strong teacher support and peer motivation woven into structured learning. Alice can set her goals and with the GSE Learning Objectives map out what she needs to do to achieve them. Teacher encouragement and personal support – and easy access to digital coursework, a social community of others all learning English, and small classes that emphasise conversation – keep people like Alice engaged and motivated to achieve her language goals. “I cannot do it without them”, she says.

    2. Professional learners

    These learners are typically in a more formal type of English programme and are learning the language to achieve specific career milestones, such as a promotion. Their employer might even be paying for their learning or they might be reimbursed for the cost of their lessons.

    Vincenzo is 33 and works as a Product Manager in Milan for an international organization with offices around the world. He says: “I asked to take English classes as part of my professional development. My company chose an English provider and gave me a choice of group or one-to-one classes. I chose one-to-one classes as I’m easily distracted.”

    Professional learners like Vincenzo succeed using a blended learning model of learning in class and at home that they can tailor around their lives. They have a strong motivation to succeed – that’s why learning at home works for them – but step-by-step progress provided by the GSE Learning Objectives is also important to keep this motivation alive. “I met with my teacher once a week where we would work on mistakes I would make while speaking English. He would also give me extra practice materials, like interesting games and videos to listen to in my own time, to help me really get a better understanding of the language,” Vincenzo says.

    3. Academic learners

    Learning English is a requirement for many school programmes and students will continue this at college or university. Many of these students will be learning English with a formal course that offers practice tests for high-stakes exams.

    Seventeen-year-old Subra is from Malaysia and learns English at school. Some of her family live in Australia and she is considering studying abroad to attend a University that specializes in health care. When she was young, she learned in a traditional classroom backed with tests that helped her see how she was progressing. Now she uses technology, such as her Android Huawei phone to practise her English but still needs the validation of regular testing to know she is on track.

    Subrasays: “I am used to studying for tests as I prepared hard for exams to get into middle school and senior school, which was totally determined by test results.”

    Academic learners like Subra need to see demonstrable results to help them stay motivated and guide them to the level of English they need to achieve to get the required score on high-stakes tests. With the clear GSE Learning Objectives and a placement test, academic learners can map out where they are right now and where they need to be in order to reach their academic goals. These learners need encouragement and validation of their progress from their teachers to help keep them on track.

    Understanding student motivations will help you teach to their specific needs, thus helping them to stay focused and motivated in achieving their goals.

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    Raising bilingual kids: Sharing your family language at home

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    The ethical challenges of AI in education

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    AI is revolutionising every industry, and language learning is no exception. AI tools can provide students with unprecedented access to things like real-time feedback, instant translation and AI-generated texts, to name but a few.

    AI can be highly beneficial to language education by enhancing our students’ process of learning, rather than simply being used by students to ‘demonstrate’ a product of learning. However, this is easier said than done, and given that AI is an innovative tool in the classroom, it is crucial that educators help students to maintain authenticity in their work and prevent AI-assisted ‘cheating’. With this in mind, striking a balance between AI integration and academic integrity is critical.

    How AI impacts language learning

    Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini have made it easier than ever for students to refine and develop their writing. However, these tools also raise concerns about whether submitted texts are student-produced, and if so, to what extent. If students rely on text generation tools instead of their own skills, our understanding of our students’ abilities may not reflect their true proficiency.

    Another issue is that if students continue to use AI for a skill they are capable of doing on their own, they’re likely to eventually lose that skill or become significantly worse at it.

    These points create a significant ethical dilemma:

    • How does AI support learning, or does it (have the potential to) replace the learning process?
    • How can educators differentiate between genuine student ability and AI-assisted responses?

    AI-integration strategies

    There are many ways in which educators can integrate AI responsibly, while encouraging our learners to do so too.

    1.Redesign tasks to make them more ‘AI-resistant’

    No task can be completely ‘AI-resistant’, but there are ways in which teachers can adapt coursebook tasks or take inspiration from activities in order to make them less susceptible to being completed using AI.

    For example:

    • Adapt writing tasks to be hyperlocal or context-specific. Generative AI is less likely to be able to generate texts that are context-bound. Focus on local issues and developments, as well as school or classroom-related topics. A great example is having students write a report on current facilities in their classroom and suggestions for improving the learning environment.
    • Focus on the process of writing rather than the final product. Have students use mind maps to make plans for their writing, have them highlight notes from this that they use in their text and then reflect on the steps they took once they’ve written their piece.
    • Use multimodal learning. Begin a writing task with a class survey, debate or discussion, then have students write up their findings into a report, essay, article or other task type.
    • Design tasks with skill-building at the core. Have students use their critical thinking skills to analyse what AI produces, creatively adapt its output and problem solve by fact-checking AI-generated text.

    2.Use AI so that students understand you know how to use it

    Depending on the policies in your institution, if you can use AI in the classroom with your students, they will see that you know about different AI tools and their output. A useful idea is to generate a text as a class, and have students critically analyse the AI-generated text. What do they think was done well? What could be improved? What would they have done differently?

    You can also discuss the ethical implications of AI in education (and other industries) with your students, to understand their view on it and better see in what situations they might see AI as a help or a hindrance.

    3.Use the GSE Learning Objectives to build confidence in language abilities

    Sometimes, students might turn to AI if they don’t know where to start with a task or lack confidence in their language abilities. With this in mind, it’s important to help your students understand where their language abilities are and what they’re working towards, with tangible evidence of learning. This is where the GSE Learning Objectives can help.

    The Global Scale of English (GSE) provides detailed, skill-specific objectives at every proficiency level, from 10 to 90. These can be used to break down complex skills into achievable steps, allowing students to see exactly what they need to do to improve their language abilities at a granular level.

    • Start by sharing the GSE Learning Objectives with students at the start of class to ensure they know what the expectations and language goals are for the lesson. At the end of the lesson, you can then have students reflect on their learning and find evidence of their achievement through their in-class work and what they’ve produced or demonstrated.
    • Set short-term GSE Learning Objectives for the four key skills – speaking, listening, reading and writing. That way, students will know what they’re working towards and have a clear idea of their language progression.