Communication - Commitment 4

 

The Commitment:

  • Determine the top three most common languages (excluding English) that are spoken at home by your staff by either surveying employees or compiling this information from existing records, and

  • Contact Settlement Services in the Bow Valley to arrange workshops in the language groups identified.


Why This Commitment?

Even multilingual locals who are fluent in English can miss or misunderstand important messages at critical times.

Knowing which languages your team members speak allows you to translate key messages when you need to, and create a database you can draw on to better service your customers and guests.

While it’s not realistic to translate everything, Settlement Services in the Bow Valley can offer no-cost workshops on some of the most important topics locals need to understand in the most common languages your team members speak.

How To Complete This Commitment (Evaluation Plan)

In October 2022, we’ll ask Settlement Services in the Bow Valley (SSBV) for a list of organizations that submitted a Point-in-Time Staffing Profile: Home Languages form (see Resources) and worked to schedule settlement workshops in one or more of the languages listed in that form.

Resources

  • Sample survey question to determine which languages your team members speak:

    ”[Organization name] is committed to supporting our diverse and multilingual team members. We want to help make sure everyone in our team can understand important information. Which language or languages do you usually speak at home?”

  • Information about collecting and disclosing personal information in Alberta. Excerpt:

“An organization can ask for a person’s consent to collect, use or disclose his or her personal information for reasonable purposes. In most cases, the organization must collect the personal information directly from that person.

Before or while collecting the information, the organization must:

  • give notice that it intends to collect personal information and provide the purposes for the collection

  • give the name, position or title of the person who is able to answer the individual’s questions

The organization must give the person a reasonable opportunity to decline his or her consent.”

Point in Time Staffing Profile: Languages: