Importance of Localizing Internal Training for Employees

Globalization has profoundly impacted every aspect of modern business by allowing companies to transcend borders. It has expanded the business landscape and allowed organizations to establish offices in multiple countries and even continents, creating a new challenge: training, educating, and preparing many global employees to tackle their jobs in the best way.

Catering to this international mix of employees has made it clear that a standardized internal training procedure is not “one size fits all.” Corporations must adapt training materials and approaches to align with the cultural, linguistic, and regional preferences of different target markets. By customizing employee training to suit local contexts, organizations can ensure better comprehension, engagement, and retention of information.

What is Corporate Training Localization?

Corporate training localization combines several localization strategies, enabling employees to get acquainted with work ethics and policies. This includes translating, dubbing, and subtitling eLearning videos, training manuals and guidelines, and other relevant presentations and aids. 

Importance of Corporate Training Localization

Training staff with differing cultural backgrounds, different native languages, and unique work cultures requires an individualized approach. By implementing a global training localization strategy, corporations guarantee that their employees are equipped with the same high-level skills and knowledge but adapted to their cultural nuances and their native language for a more effective learning experience.

Localized internal training programs can foster a sense of inclusivity and belonging among employees, leading to increased motivation and productivity. As organizations expand their operations across borders, investing in effective localizing strategies for internal training, or eLearning, becomes imperative. This helps improve the learning outcomes and strengthens the overall organizational structure by building employee trust.

The Top Five Benefits of Localizing Your Corporate Training

Localization of corporate training content offers numerous benefits for the company and the employees. It allows team members to access training materials in their native language, adjusted to specific regional needs, which enhances employee engagement and comprehension. Embracing content localization enables organizations to create impactful global training programs that generate many beneficial results.

Building a Strong Corporate Culture and Employee Loyalty

Employees are the backbone of any business. Building and maintaining a well-trained and loyal workforce should always be a priority. Statistically, 45% of workers are more likely to stay if the company puts money towards furthering their professional development and training. 

Additionally, when the staff can see that a company has invested in resources that adhere to their individual needs, their motivation to reciprocate those efforts increases. That cultivates a healthy work culture and bolsters employee loyalty.

Fostering Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

Having a diverse workforce is proven to be an advantage in the present fiercely competitive corporate market. All of those unique team members must have access to the same level of training and education to reach their peak. Localized employee programs that demonstrate an understanding of differing workplace cultures and regional quirks are an effective teaching tool.

Employees feel more valued and respected when they see themselves represented in the training materials or when they can learn in their native language. Localization celebrates their differences without compromising the quality of their learning experience.

Better Engagement, Better Learning

Corporate and compliance training programs adapted to a workforce’s specific background and culture improve employee engagement. Localization makes the materials more relevant and easily accessible to all employees. In turn, this generates more interest in the training process, makes learning easier, and increases active participation. 

Even localizing small things like the date and time format, units of measurement, and currencies can make the employee’s training easier to understand. The result is a greater understanding of the material that translates into a boosted work performance. 

Ensuring Precision and Consistency

Standardized training materials may be easy to prepare, but they may not be as effective when put into practice. Concepts can be fundamentally misunderstood in offices with distinct regional differences. For example, a sequence of events presented through pictures may be perceived differently in countries with a right-to-left script instead or the other way around.

A localization project transforms the material and brings it closer to the intended audience. At the same time, it preserves the core message and guarantees consistency across the board. Content localization can help companies convey universal messages to their diverse workforce while preserving the accuracy and consistency of the training methods or educational materials.  

Adhering to Local Legal Regulations

Many parent companies, with subsidiaries across the globe, are legally obligated to provide their employees with work materials in their native language. They enhance the workers’ learning experience, provide compliance training, and obey local laws and regulations. 

Translation and localization of other relevant documentation like methodologies, forms, and reports is a must. It ensures the company is observing the legal requirements and it is also beneficial for local stakeholders.

Challenges in Localizing Your Corporate Training

Implementing a localization strategy on a large scale represents a unique challenge where each market needs to be tackled with tailormade tactics. The logistics of localizing a global training method is tricky and may require expert assistance, but the results are always favorable. Recognizing those challenges can help overcome them in several ways.

The Logistics of Localizing eLearning Courses

Since corporate training materials tend to take many different forms, from video to PDF pamphlets, and presentation decks, actually extracting content for translation and re-inserting it into your LMS (Learning Management System) can be a complicated and time-consuming task. If you’re dealing with localizing training courses that contain multimedia, it’s best to work with an expert partner who can handle the pre-and post-processing of your files. Look for a well-equipped localization partner who specializes in eLearning localization, and make sure they have experience with your LMS.

Focus on the Target Audience and Their Language Variety

Knowing the target language for translating the training materials is insufficient. Companies need to consider the geographical location of their workforce and the dialect they speak. One language may be the official spoken language in several places, but the dialect still varies from country to country. That means paying attention to spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, and even grammatical structure differences.

On the other hand, some workplaces may be multilingual. There may be two official languages or even several non-official languages spoken by large enough groups that will also benefit from the translation and localization efforts.

Strive to Enhance Engagement and Retention

You can’t expect to engage your workers and retain their attention if the teaching tools you give them are not up to par. The internal training examples and stories used to teach them must be culturally appropriate and inoffensive. Materials should be free of spelling errors and formatting mistakes, and subtitles should be included in video or audio presentations.

Paying attention to details allows for a learning environment free from distractions and unintended uncomfortable situations. It demonstrates cheerful consideration and respect on the employer’s part and drives the workers to achieve better results.

7 Steps for Localizing Internal Training for Employees

Knowing the benefits of implementing content localization for your internal training programs also requires knowing how to reach that goal. Doing it individually can be a time-consuming and complex process. Luckily, we have prepared a guide you can follow to achieve success. Follow the 7 steps below to improve the internal training procedure. 

Embracing Cultural and Language Localization

Providing employees with work and training content that is clear, concise, and appropriate to their specific linguistic and cultural background demonstrates a clear dedication to their development and success. It’s a small detail that will improve employee work performance.

When companies understand the cultural complexities of their workforce in a specific location, they also better understand their potential clients in that market. Once they have an effective localization strategy in place that focuses on the employees, it will be easier to develop effective campaigns that know how to best affect their target audience.

Adapting eLearning Content for Local Audiences

Digitalization and the Internet have made exchanging knowledge and experience across borders faster and more convenient. When it comes to employee training, eLearning localization is a crucial component that ensures parties in different regions have access to the same knowledge database.

You can easily adjust eLearning content to fit any workplace’s local linguistic and cultural norms. You can personalize online training props like presentations, booklets, and educational videos within minutes, alongside consistency and quality assurance.

Maximizing ROI and Profit Margins with Local Stakeholder Involvement

When working on any localization project, it’s always best to involve native participants who are familiar with how the region operates. They should also be familiar with the language and cultural specificities that need to be considered when adapting training content.

Local stakeholders understand the regional market demands and potential audiences. This unique perspective can be utilized to increase employee productivity and yield a higher ROI. 

Streamlining Training Localization for Business Advancement

The localization process must be streamlined to ensure maximum efficiency and consistency across varying regions. That is achieved by grouping the training processes, expertise, and materials into one centralized cloud-based system. In that way, all relevant processes can be edited simultaneously by native end-to-end localization professionals while the company maintains uniformity and quality.

Streamlining the localization process saves time and money by eliminating the need to prepare new materials for each region. Also, this is where the eLearning approach shines, enabling employees to access the training programs quickly.

Strategizing for Effective Training Localization

As the saying goes, “An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing.” The localization process can be facilitated by already having set goals to strive towards. The first step to achieving this is being familiar with the structure of the target workforce and its training needs.

Next is researching and reaching out to agencies that offer all-inclusive localization services. Partnering with a local provider that can fulfill all required localization needs, like translation, voice-overs, and subtitling, is a cost-effective and time-saving strategy. These two simple steps, in combination, ensure that all training programs provided to employees are relevant and productive.

Harnessing Technology’s Role in Training Program Localization

Technology can be a powerful tool for enhancing the effectiveness of training program localization. eLearning platforms give workers unparalleled flexibility and access to training resources. By implementing online training programs, organizations increase the chances of collaboration, knowledge exchange, and cross-border teamwork.

Online platforms also cut down the time needed to edit and update the training resources, further optimizing the localization process.

Crafting Customized Gamification and Case Studies for Cultural Relevance

Another tactic to motivate and encourage employees is to incorporate games and challenges during training. You can set a common goal and certain milestones and checkpoints that workers must pass to achieve. That encourages thinking outside the box and creative problem-solving.

When applying gamification to the training process, it’s important to customize the game elements to the cultural preferences of the target audience. For example, leaderboards and badges may be more effective in Western cultures, where individualism is preferred. In Eastern cultures, employees may be more comfortable with games focused on cooperation and teamwork.

A Deep Dive into BLEND’s Localization Technology

The above may seem like a large and complicated undertaking, but you can always ask for professional help from agencies specializing in the translation and localization of eLearning content. BLEND is an agency that specializes in eLearning localization, especially for businesses working with LMSs like Articulate Story or Rise.

BLEND is a well-established provider of localization and translation services that has been active on the market since 2008. We offer an expansive range of technology-driven solutions that can take your corporate training programs to the next level, such as:

• Translation of texts and websites
• Localization of audio, video, and content
• Dubbing and subtitling
• Recording voice-overs
• Developing eLearning tools
• AI data enrichment
• Machine assisted translation
• Video transcription and captioning

At BLEND, we use a mix of natural language processing technology and local human talent. We have assembled a global team of native speakers who collectively know over 120 languages and 3,200 language pairs. This human element provides expert translations and crucial insights into the linguistic and cultural nuances of a region. BLEND uses technology to ensure the delivered product is always consistent and on time. Our eLearning experts can assist your team with setting up the right workflows for efficient pre-and post-processing, translation, and video localization.

Organizations can streamline and optimize the training localization process using BLEND’s localization technology platform. They can ensure all employees have access to high-quality, relevant training, regardless of their location or background. But BLEND does more than just localize training programs. It can become a hub for your internal or external language projects. 

We will help expand your presence on the global scene to become a household name in any local market. To find out why business giants like Xiaomi, Payoneer, MoroccanOil, and UbiSoft choose to work with BLEND, visit our site and look over the case studies and internal training examples.

Final Thoughts: The Importance of Localizing Internal Training

When it comes to modern business, the workplace is more diverse than ever with colleagues from around the world working together. Companies have offices in multiple countries and staff them with people from different backgrounds and cultures. Investing in the localization of training programs guarantees that each employee receives adequate education customized to their experience and needs.

Adapting the training material to reflect regional features and sensibilities makes employees feel appreciated and allows them to reach their full potential. Happy and fulfilled employees lead to increased productivity and greater profit margins. So find a trusted localization partner and start localizing your path to global success today!

Corinne Sharabi

Corinne is the Social Media and Content Lead at BLEND. She is dedicated to keeping global business professionals up to date on all things localization, translation, language and culture.

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