Why The Transportation Industry Needs Language Skills

Language skills open up a whole world of opportunities, especially for the transportation industry. Find out why in our blog:

Just like a wide range of industries, everything is expanding its reach. The transportation industry today isn’t just operating locally anymore. From air, rail, water, cable, pipeline, and space, globalization is now the biggest trend that’s sure to stay. 

Companies coordinate with their international counterparts all the time, as well as, have employees who interact with clients and partners from different cultural backgrounds. And in response to the world’s seamless and integrated flow, transportation companies should also be just as agile.

What better way to push forward in the global landscape than by improving your communication and language abilities?

Language is now viewed as a key skill

With the evolving business landscape and thinning borders, it would be a huge disadvantage for you as a professional in the transportation industry to be limited to just one language. How you communicate and how proficient you are in doing so matters greatly, especially in a field where you deal with people on a daily basis. 

Traditionally, the transportation and logistics industry has provided relatively easy access to employment. But as technology changes the working environment, greater skills, which include language, are demanded in entry-level and formerly low-skilled roles.

Added to the wide gap between the language skills required and the skills that are actually available, employers are looking to have their workforce equipped with the right language skills through language learning programs.

And rightly so because bilingualism (or better yet, multilingualism) comes with many benefits such as better increased cognitive skills, memory, and perceptiveness.

It widens your horizons and promotes inclusivity

Being an industry that caters to customers and partners from different parts of the world, having only technical expertise just won’t cut it anymore. The globalization of things is calling for a workforce that can understand their international customers better and is geared towards improved cross-border team performance.

Learning a language that opens more opportunities to communicate with a large group of people will also allow you to broaden your understanding of the culture your target language is from. Not only that, but it helps you enlarge your understanding of the nuances of cultures and other ways of living aside from your own.

It increases work performance and service

Research by the British Chambers of Commerce showed that over three-quarters of the companies responding to their survey reckoned they missed or lost business because of a lack of language skills.

In contrast, companies that invest in language skills, through a mixture of recruitment, training, and strategic targeting by language, are succeeding in increasing the ratio of exports to sales by 37 percent. So, who says language skills don’t produce business growth and ROI?

Language doesn’t just help boost a company to success, it also helps improve performance at work! The Language Flagship report notes that for transportation and delivery companies, drivers need at least basic-level language capabilities to communicate simply but effectively to customers receiving packages. Their customer service representatives, on the other hand, need higher levels of language proficiency to handle complex matters of tracking services and regulatory issues.

As for the technical aspect, having to hire services that localize, translate, and interpret materials and documents for you isn’t just time and energy-consuming, but also not budget-friendly. Hence, achieve greater efficiency by hiring and training your workforce to easily do just that firsthand. Language skills are beneficial not just for their individual growth but also for the competitiveness of the company as a whole!

Language Skills Matter

Today, every industry, including the transportation industry, needs language. They are sure to help skyrocket your company to global competence because it increases work performance and service, and also widen horizons, and promotes inclusivity. With a global industry such as transportation, language skills may just be the very advantage your workforce needs to succeed.

So why not train your workforce in a global language that also serves as a support in an individual’s ongoing learning and development? The time to start accelerating your language learning is now!