As the manager of a convenience store, you want to do what’s best for the store. This often means making sure you have the best equipment, the best layout, and of course, the best employees. Naturally you want to hire people you think would be best suited to work in your store. However, too often people pass up on amazing employees just because they believe a barrier like language is too great to overcome, when in fact the opposite is true. There are a lot of great prospective employees who speak English as a second language, but worrying about the accessibility of language in training shouldn’t prevent you from hiring someone who’s otherwise a good candidate.
Onboarding ESL Employees
According to OSHA policy, when training an employee, you must use a language that the employee understands. There is a lot of logic behind this statement – considering how many topics need to be covered in convenience store training, it’s very important that employees understand what they’re learning. This doesn’t necessarily mean that YOU need to know the language they’re being trained in.
If your learning management system (LMS) features training in multiple languages, you can ensure that each of your employees receives the same training regardless of which language they’re most comfortable learning with. In fact, increasing accessibility in training this way has a lot of other benefits as well, including:
- Making onboarding more welcoming – Being prepared to cater to your employees can make them feel more valued, and having their preferred language available is much more welcoming than making them deal with a language they may not be fully comfortable with yet.
- Allowing them to focus on the content – Trying to understand a language you’re not fluent in can take a lot of effort, even for people who are already proficient with it.
- Minimizing misconceptions – Perhaps the biggest benefit of being able to train in your own language, the importance of knowing and understanding precisely what is being discussed in the training cannot be overstated.
Of course, we can’t forget the extra bonus of making training more accessible: expanding your pool of potential hires for your store. Language accessibility opens employment to many more people, with all levels of English proficiency.
Check Out trainingGrid® Today!
The trainingGrid® LMS delivers online training and blended learning strategies through learning paths that are customized for your organization. Its intuitive design makes learning management simple and allows employees to begin training with just a click. This flexible system comes with a variety of robust, accessible, customizable features, and has many training topics available in both English and Spanish.
