The challenge
English is the language of business, which means that a multinational in which a majority of employees don’t speak the language can be a problem. Building relationships with clients around the world, working with teams in other countries, having a solid brand… all of these factors can be affected by the lack of English language, which is the common denominator when one thinks about communication between people who don’t share the same native language.
This was the case at Boston Scientific. The company, a world leader in medical technology for over 40 years, had a large majority (60%) of personnel with a fairly basic level of English (Pre-A1 or A1, on the Common European Framework of Reference scale). With these numbers in mind, they knew that English training needed to be a priority within the company.
In order to ensure that they improved English proficiency across the organization, the company needed a training platform that would scale to match the needs of a large and diverse employee population — from the lowest levels to to the highest — with the particular objective of providing opportunities for professional English development to people who normally don’t have access to them.
Beyond that, with the pandemic reaching a peak, Boston Scientific’s team realized that, in order to accomplish the learning and development goals they’d set for the organization, they needed to adapt their training strategies for digital channels, and they concluded that Slang was the ideal tool.
“It’s been an excellent experience. It’s helped me grow my vocabulary and express myself better.”
Miriam Rodríguez
Production Trainer
The solution
With the objective of ensuring that workers from diverse areas and levels would be able to learn English, the development plan needed to be adapted to cover the job function of every employee using the service in the best way possible.
This is where Slang came in. We brought an integrated, 100% digital professional development solution focused on English for workers, based on a strategy that offered the opportunity to boost the necessary skills for the industry and for the specific roles and job titles that the company had through our offering — the world’s largest — of professional English courses.
The success of the implementation rested on the following key characteristics and decisions:
Development plans tied to learning
By meeting their learning goals in terms of points earned and time studied, employees were granted promotion opportunities and access to new training.
Practice sessions with the Learner Experience team
We put together learning spaces and paired people up to practice together, with the goal of putting the content they’d studied into use within a professional environment.
User follow-up
Beyond motivation campaigns, we also did regular follow-up on study frequency and usage patterns, focusing especially on those who weren’t very consistent.
Culture of responsibility
The promotion of a culture committed to the benefits of learning contributed enormously to employees’ continued use of the platform, even during a pandemic and the accompanying high workload.
“Slang’s been very useful. My English knowledge has gone up now that I’ve been using the app consistently for a while.”
Karol Gonzalez
Production Lead
The results
During the peak of the pandemic in LATAM (March to September 2020), average use of Slang was affected by various factors: remote work, internet connectivity, and family responsibilities, among others, but despite all these challenges, employees at Boston Scientific showed usage levels well above average and distinguished themselves by being ahead of the curve.
At the end of the program, these were the results:
“It really helps in building a foundation for learning the language. Slang’s become a good tool, quick and practical, for studying English.”
Luis Zuñiga & Alejandra Marín
Language Specialist – Learning & Development, HR
The numbers speak for themselves. With the help of our hyper-customized methodology, getting your employees to a higher level of English proficiency will be a piece of cake.
After seeing these results, what are you waiting for? Partner with Slang today
