Alejandro Maldonado Jeffery McMahon LANGUAGE BARRIER

 Organization introduction.  Issue: Communication in different languages.  Purposed Solution: Bilingual employee always on sight, language classes.  Recommendation: Follow our purposed strategy to hire employees, invest in your employees, retain clients, and increase profits. OVERVIEW

DIGITAL WIRELESS  Local-family business in El Paso, TX.  Established in 2004  Offer a variety of services including :  New lines of service  Payments  Repairs

 Living in a border city, we have a huge concentration of Hispanic clients.  Not everyone is bilingual, and this tends to be an issue for businesses in El Paso.  Many times a person who only speaks one language will encounter another person at a business who only speaks a different language. If there is no way for them to communicate, then potential business and profits can be lost.

CONCERNS  If an employee and client are unable to communicate, how is business suppose to occur?  If business does not occur, no transaction/sale is made.  If sales aren’t made then revenues will not rise.  Lack of sales will cause businesses to shut down.

LANGUAGE STATISTICS  According to the Census ( ), 81.4% of people in El Paso are of Hispanic/Latino origin.  And, 74.1% of people speak a language other than English at home.  Majority of the 74.1% are speaking Spanish to communicate.

PURPOSED SOLUTION – STEP 1  To fix this issue that threatens potential revenues we conducted a solution. (Goal 1)  We need to begin in the hiring process. – We know that it is difficult to hire pure bilingual employees. It is hard to find people who are fluent in both languages.  Goal 1, is to hire enough bilingual people to have one available at every shift.  If we have someone who can communicate in both languages fluently, at all times, then potential sales can be made.

 As a business in El Paso, having your full employment force bilingual is ideal.  After reaching our first goal of having a bilingual person at every shift, our ultimate goal is to have our full employment force fluent in both languages.  We can do this two ways:  1. Continue to hire only bilingual employees until we reach our ultimate goal.  2. Provide language classes to the employees who only speak one language. PURPOSED SOLUTION – STEP 2

COST  The cost to hire and train an associate varies. Time, patience, and money all go in to creating an employee for Digital Wireless.  The cost of language classes can be costly as well.  Rosetta Stone. – One time purchase that can be passed on from employee to employee. Or, weekly classes can be held by the company and they use the program to teach the language.  English version - $500/ program  Spanish version - $500/ program  Language classes at a community college.  EPCC - $200 - $400/ person

LANGUAGE CLASSES  We recommend that the company purchases Rosessta Stone in both languages (English & Spanish). It would be more effective if employees used them to their advantage to learn the language that they lack.  Management could set up a workshop and have multiple employees benefit from the program.  This can be a lengthy process. Learning a language is not effortless.  Investing in your employee education to learn a new language can benefit the company significantly.

LANGUAGE BARRIER  Invest in your employees, and see your revenues prosper…

WORK CITED  Maldonado, Alejandro. Interview by Jeffery McMahon.Digital Wireless 28 Jun Jun. Print.  U.S. Census,. N.p.. Web. 2 Jul