Workers at Bethlehem-based Hydac Technology hail from China, Syria, Vietnam and Spanish-speaking nations. Supervisors and non-English speaking employees use pictures and simple instructions to help communicate with each other, human resources manager Frank Doklan said, also noting “there’s always room for improvement.”
Doklan joined with 14 other area employers at a luncheon in September to hear from Adrienne Beck on how to better communicate. Beck worked for years in workplace English language training in the U.S. and globally.
“I started to see a large number of immigrants coming into jobs and not having the English language skills to be successful,” said Beck, founder of ELL (English Language Learners) Excel. The goal of the training is making language comprehension as simple as possible. This means using simple verbs and phrases, Beck said.
“You are making them proficient in English,” Beck said. “You are not making them fluent. You are making them comprehensible.”