How Landscaping Companies Can Overcome a Language Barrier When Training Their Team
Did you know that PowerPoint has a translation feature built into it?
As more Spanish-speaking team members joined the Grunder Landscaping Co. team, we struggled with making our all-team training effective when our speaker wasn't bilingual.
For skills training, we usually pair our trainers up with team leaders who speak the same language, ask our bilingual team members to help, or get by with hands-on demonstrations and Google Translate. But when we train on other skills like customer service we want to ensure our whole team can engage with the training.
Enter: Powerpoint Translations.
Our Group Leaders who speak Spanish were adamant that it's helpful to see the Spanish next to the English because it helps them to learn more English, and they preferred us doing this to having a translator come in. So, when I was leading a team session on working well as a team, I phoned a friend and asked our resident PowerPoint expert, Emily Lindley, for help. She used the translation feature built into PowerPoint to put the Spanish and English versions of what we were teaching side by side.
To get to the translation feature, you'll go to the Review tab in PowerPoint, then you'll see Translate in the Language section. Click that, and it opens a side panel where you can translate the English version of your slide. Click into a text box where you want the translation to go, then click insert. It will fill the translation in and you'll just need to touch up any formatting.
Are the translations perfect? Probably not. But it's an easy way for us to be more inclusive in our training so that our entire team benefits from our investment in them.
We're really proud of the company culture we've built at GLC and the harmony we have with people from all different backgrounds working together. Our philosophy on the language barrier is to try to meet in the middle as much as possible, with our English-speaking team members learning some Spanish and our Spanish-speaking team members learning English.
Want to learn more about how we're leading and investing in our team? Join us at one of our Grunder Landscaping Co. Field Trips this fall. We just had a great group of landscape pros with us this past week, and we only have two more dates available for you to join us: November 1-2 or December 6-7. Will I see you in Dayton this year?
Marty Grunder
Founder & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.