No, Seriously: What IS The ROI Of Professional (Language) Training?

This is me, teaching my dog new tricks. Get it? “Teaching”? Ba-dum, tss.

Hello, hello!

If you've read my previous rants on the "coaching/self-help/personal development" industry (examples: 1, 2), you know I hate exaggerated claims and 'creative' interpretations of facts that only serve to push a certain product.

So in this article I'm going to take you with me on a little amateur investigation on the ROI of language training for companies. After all, you probably keep hearing "education is always an investment", "professional training is always useful", "you gotta invest in your staff", and yadda yadda. And I wouldn't be doing this job if I didn't believe this to be true...to some degree. And in certain contexts.

See, if you start looking into it, it becomes pretty hard to pinpoint a clear relationship between "company turnover" and "L&D for your employees"; ANY L&D - not just language or speaking training. So in this article I will put on my Inspector Clouseau hat and attempt a deeper dive. To separate feelgoodsy platitudes and rah-rah inspirational slogans from facts. So we can both (*'we' assumes you're some type of L&D person for a company) do our jobs better.

ATTEMPT #1 - My own experience

Having trained professionals for a decade now, I have plenty of anecdotal evidence here. I've had opera singers and professional actors who got German-speaking roles in large part (according to them) thanks to my traning.

I've had corporate professionals get jobs or promotions that needed a certain proficiency in German or English (B2-level, usually).

I've had several clients who took lessons with me because they were moving from the UK to their company's HQ in the DACH territory - Switzerland, Germany, Austria. I've had managers have me train their UK teams so they can take part in meetings with their DACH counterparts, and be part of the work and culture when they visited every couple of months.

In short, I've seen a lot of good things come out of people getting language training - especially in a professional context. People who took language lessons for private reasons (usually "my spouse/family is German/Swiss/Austrian and I'd like to fit in better") generally got worse results - because the stakes aren't as visibly* high. And it's harder to put an ROI on good results, either way - how can I tell you how important becoming fluent in German or English 'should' be to you? Exactly: I can't.

(*Notice how I'm not saying 'not as high' - just 'not as visibly high'. Because who knows what the stakes of not fitting in better with your foreign family are? It could be the straw that breaks the camel's back, because maybe you promised your spouse before getting married that you'd make a real effort to learn their culture. It could also be of absolutely no consequence because they might not mind - families are all different. It's more likely to be closer to the 'it'll be fine' end of the spectrum, though.)

Since clients - especially of the professional/corporate variety - were happy with their results, they must have felt they got their money's worth. One thing to note here: while my rates have always been above the UK average since Year 2 or 3 of my freelancing, they've never been those "high-ticket" offers of thousand£££ a month, with a minimum 6-month commitment or whatever (like you might see in the "coaching" industry). I bet that if my prices shot up by 10x, several of my happy clients would be singing a different tune.

So this *does* imply there is a weighing of cost-VS-result here, even if we struggle to put an exact number on it. OK, next stop!

ATTEMPT #2 - Let's do some Googling!

One of the top results when I googled "what is the ROI of corporate language training?" was by a leading corporate training provider in Belgium (and, from what I can tell, affiliated with the KU Leuven university). They have an article that reads like a lot of the typical "here's why language training is important!" thinkpieces I've seen. Now, this isn't meant to disparage colleagues; that company has good reviews and is endorsed by a state university. I'm simply pointing out how

A. easy it is to follow the crowd and mindlessly repeat "oh yes - X is, like, super important!"

B. hard it is to get specific details on the ROI of this.

Here are a few things I caught in that article:

- first of all, the bold title: "multilingualism creates 10-20% of turnover". So the implication here is businesses that hire multilingual staff (or invest in language training that makes them multilingual) make 10-20% more, right?

Here's my first question: how was this measured? Mentioned in the article is "a study by the University of Geneva, among as many as 200 Swiss companies". A quick Google search didn't show me the relevant study. Not saying it doesn't exist; it probably does, but as there was no author or year of publication mentioned, it's not quickly googleable. The first several results that came up were about language courses at the University of Geneva - not studies. The first *study* that showed up was a recent one (2023), but it was on "Multilingualism, multicultural experience, cognition, and creativity" - not ROI for corporate language training.

See? This is what I mean. The picture gets quite hazy once you start looking into it. Why are these studies and numbers not quoted more clearly and in context? I'm willing to believe them, mind you - as said, my own 10+ years of experience suggest the same. But it's nice to have real numbers to support your anecdotes, isn't it?

Another question I have is: what types of businesses are we talking about? 'Cause I can see how a diverse and multilingual staff can improve a call center: more languages, more customer service options. But what about businesses that don't have such an obvious connection of "more languages = more customers = more money", like...financial companies?

- secondly: the bold claim about "40 billion euros of our gross domestic product is due to the multilingualism of our employees". How do we know this? They draw a parallel between Belgium and Switzerland, as both are countries with three official languages (German being one of those).

Other than that, there doesn't seem to be much of a connection - the logic is simply "what happens in Switzerland must map over to here". Again, it makes sense in theory. But how do we know it also works this way in praxis? And how do we really know what % of a country's GPD comes from multilingualism? Well, I suppose certain industries like tourism are inextricably linked to it. But neither Belgium nor Switzerland have tourism as a key industry (it makes up 3% or less of their GPD, according to Wikipedia).

The plot thickens.

See how easy it is to get caught up in 'bandwagoning' and joining the happy chorus of people evangelizing the benefits of something?

- next: the training provider's MD is quoted saying *"The better that communication is, the happier people feel at work. Therefore, it pays to invest in your colleagues' language skills: it gets you delighted employees, which ensures that your productivity picks up"*.

Again, it makes sense both in theory and in my anecdotal experience. Whenever I've delivered training for corporate clients, the employees that showed up consistently, enjoyed the sessions, and made the most progress, were the ones who were overall happy with their employer. A generous L&D budget, flexible working options, a good relationship with their colleagues and superiors - they all made it more likely an employee was going to be committed and happy to learn. Companies with a culture of stress, inflexibility, lack of understanding and humanity in the upper echelons, usually gave me strung-out staff that wasn't motivated to learn and made far less progress despite my best efforts.

So of course I agree that "if you invest in / take care of your employees, they'll be more productive" - as learners or otherwise. It's just...hard to put a number on it.

> This leads me to the next question: do we NEED to put a number on it? Does there have to be a clear-cut ROI in the vein of "for every dollar invested in L&D, the company makes four"?

Well...as we say in German: jein (that's short for 'ja + nein' - which I guess sounds better than 'yo', as a fusion of 'yes + no').

I can think of reasons both for AND against a clear ROI.

* On one hand, businesses are in the...uh, business of making profit. It's hard to manage what doesn't get measured, so not knowing how your expenses stack up against your revenue is risky at best. 'Cause when the expense is something like 'a new printer' - alright, "screw it", you might say. Especially if you're a decent-sized company and not a bootstrapping startup that needs to watch every dollar. But what if the expense is a training course for your staff, that goes into the thousands of dollars? Can you afford to spend that because "well, it never hurts"?

And that's where context matters - 'cause maybe you can. Maybe you have a generous L&D budget of X dollars this year, and it's not expected to yield immediate and/or tangible ROI. Just as getting a new game room for your employees might not. Or weekly office-wide yoga sessions. Maybe your company culture is less about tangible ROIs in the context of "investing in your employees", and you know that as long as morale stays high and people feel heard and taken care of, they'll be productive - details on the HOW they're taken care of being less important.

And maybe you can't. Maybe your company is still small, or budgets have been cut this year, and you really need a good case for "let's invest in L&D" - something more concrete than "well, it never hurts" or "happy employees are more productive". In that case, you might want to do a couple of things - just my opinion, from my experience:

1. double- and triple-check that the ways you DO invest in your employees are actually what they want. The standard thing I've heard so many employees complain about is "the company is giving us X, when we'd much rather have Y!". X often being something like 'team-building' activities along the lines of a Friday lunch on the company's dime, or an avoidable work trip meant to be 'fun'...when the employees would rather have had a raise, or childcare, or a better L&D budget.

2. gradually increase the 'risk' (AKA investment). Not sure a full-blown 3- or 6-month English course will yield enough results to justify its price? Why not start with a one-day intensive or workshop? Or a 1-month mini-course (probably not for beginners, though)? See the effects it has on your team, and adjust accordingly. And if your company keeps growing and your L&D budget increases, the 'risk' gets smaller.

*** Notice how I'm specifically mentioning financial ROI, because *of course* a well-delivered training will have concrete results. People go from this level of German to that one - or from struggling to speak in front of stakeholders to delivering an engaging presentation. But someone (whether that's a little voice in the back of your mind, or your boss!) might still be asking "Yeah, yeah - so the team learned the Subjunctive. How does that make or save us money?" - and this is why I'm attempting to look into ROI from that angle.

- bear in mind, the ROI might be in money *saved* and not money *made*. Here's an example: let's say you have a London team of five, of which only one is fluent in German - let's call him Jörg. But this team needs to liaise with senior colleagues counterparts in Zurich or Linz. If they're senior, they might be more old-fashioned and believe in conducting business in German - which now leaves that one team member playing interpreter. This doesn't only potentially make them unavailable for any other task - it also creates a bottleneck in your communications; what the team can communicate is limited to what Jörg can reasonably handle at once.

But what if all five members of the team spoke B2-level German? Instant flexibility. Now, I’m not gonna lie: this example is not THAT likely, since most businesspeople in the DACH area speak fluent English. But you get the gist: there potentially are ways to track ROI beyond woolly terms like "increased productivity".

Another example of this would be reduced employee turnover - after all, it's cheaper to keep existing employees than to train new ones.

Let’s Do A Quick Check-In

So far, what have we seen? Here's a summary:

1. A LOT of articles out there will claim that getting your staff trained in languages (or in general) will supposedly yield an ROI of X% - mostly with very little hard data to back it up.

2. I ranted about the fluffy language often used in such thinkpieces, because I like clear-cut information (and if you're reading this, there's a chance you do, too *and all this feelgoodsy vaguey vagueness IS MAKING BOTH OUR JOBS HARDER GODDAMMIT*).

3. I added a bunch of anecdotal experience from my 10+ years of training professionals, that suggested there *is* a benefit to getting professional (language, or otherwise) training - although the exact ROI is hard to measure.

4. We delved into the possibility of having an ROE (Return on Expectations) as opposed to an ROI, because financial returns might be hard to calculate, especially in the short term. Then we talked about how non-financial results can also potentially be important, depending on context.

5. And how some seemingly non-financial results like "employee satisfaction" or "morale" can have financial impact in the mid- to long-term (eg. employees who feel well taken care of stick around longer, which drives down recruitment and training-new-staff costs).

Actionable Steps You Can Potentially Take Away From All Of This

1. Think about whether your team/company prioritizes ROI or ROE, and plan accordingly.

2. Think about context: if you have an X budget to spend on professional training, *who* benefits most? Maybe your entry-level employees won't, but your C-Suite will - or vice versa.

3. Think about what your organization's priority is right now: making more money? Maybe professional training isn't the thing for you right now. Saving money? It might be, depending on context. Retaining staff? A lot more likely.

4. Check the person or organization you're considering hiring to train your staff has experience training busy professionals and can - ideally - add a splash of business-related things into the curriculum (eg. German business culture VS a generic "A2-level German language training").

5. Think about budget some more, especially in context: are you looking for "troubleshooting / maintenance" work, or "learn something from (almost) scratch" work? 'Cause if you need your newcomers trained in, say, German, there's not much point in booking 2-3 months of lessons and then calling it quits because you just don't have the budget to continue. Short-term is for troubleshooting and can be fine for an executive who already speaks good German but just needs a touch-up or some ad-hoc help. It's not very useful for newbie students and will very likely end up being just a tick-the-box exercise with no real long-term benefit.

That's all for now; thank you for coming along on this little trip, if you're still reading. As always, comments are open for feedback - as is my email.

Talk to you soon,

Nick