Hispanic Employees - Why don't they learn English?

No one can deny that the face of our workplace is changing at an alarming rate. We have new technologies, laws & regulations to follow, new customers with different demands to meet, and now we have a new language spoken in the workplace to boot. With the dramatic increase of Hispanic immigrants into our workforces, Spanish is becoming the second language on the job in many labor-intensive industries. This can be very frustrating for supervisors and other English-speaking employees when trying to communicate with this new group and understand them. “They are in OUR country now! Why don’t they learn English?” I have heard this complaint uttered by frustrated supervisors for as long as I have worked with culturally-diverse businesses. It is often uttered by the very same people who have chosen to hire Hispanic immigrants because of their availability and their impressive work ethic. To understand the answer to this question I would like to tell you a hypothetical, but realistic story, of a Hispanic construction worker named Juan:

Juan’s Story

Juan, a father of four, is from a rural community outside the city of Zacatecas, Mexico. He struggles to earn about $60 a week working in a textile mill in the city. At the end of the week he will have to spend about $50 dollars of that just to put food on the table. Juan hears stores from many friends and relatives that in the U.S. there are jobs paying $600 dollars PER WEEK! In order to provide for his family, Juan risks his life to cross the border into a new land, new culture, and a new language having no idea where his next meal will come from or where he will ultimately be. He has been told by friends and relatives that have come before him that there are good jobs available in construction in the Carolinas so he slowly makes his way up from Texas half-way across the country to North Carolina where he shows up on the doorstep of his cousin, Carlos who lives in a small one-bedroom apartment shared by 5 other Mexicans men. Carlos is working for a small concrete sub-contractor nearby and offers to take him to work the next day to see if he can get him hired on. The contractor has been struggling to find enough people to get the work done and offers him a job immediately based on his cousin’s recommendation.

Two months pass, and Juan has been working non-stop for the contractor 60 hours-a-week earning 8 dollars an hour pouring concrete. On the job, Juan is put in a work crew with several other Mexicans who happen to be from rural areas not far from Zacatecas and Juan immediately feels comfortable working with them. They speak the same language but more importantly they have the same national and local roots. Juan works as hard as he can so his supervisor will be happy with him and he can keep his job. His supervisor Bill, tall loud-spoken man from Davidson County, occasionally shouts things to him in English, moving his hands and gesturing firmly. Juan has picked up a few English words while on the job but feels intimidated by his supervisor and is afraid to say much for fear of sounding foolish. Nervously, Juan smiles to him and nods his head, not wanting to risk Bill becoming displeased with him. The next chance he gets he asks Carlos what was said. Carlos just tells him to keep doing what he’s doing. Juan would like to be able to speak English but it seems so hard and having only a 6th grade education, he feels that he is not smart enough to really learn it – he wouldn’t know where to start. Besides he is so tired at the end of the day and it so much easier just to go home with Carlos and his roommates who speak Spanish and that live in a neighborhood where most everyone else does too. Even the owner of the store on the street corner, where he wires most of his paycheck to his family in Mexico, speaks Spanish and sells him most everything he needs.

Supervisors much have a cross-cultural perspective

Being willing to see things from the perspective of the Hispanic employee is the first step in crossing workplace language and cultural barriers. If you are a leader in your company, it is you who must take the responsibility to provide the tools and support necessary so that the people building your products have what they need to be successful. If there is a communication problem it really is your responsibility to reach out to your Hispanic employees. Be friendly and sensitive to their situation. You don’t have to become fluent in Spanish – but learning a few words and customs will go a long way to making them me comfortable with you. Before you know it, you and your Spanish-speaking employees will learn to “meet each other halfway”. I have found that the cultural barrier to be a far more formidable barrier than the language barrier. By simply learning more about your Hispanic employees, you will discover that the “language barrier” is not as big as you think.