English language training is critical for companies that want to compete in the international arena. But to achieve success, it is not enough to simply have a language learning program in place. In order for your language learning program to make a real impact, it needs to be implemented as a strategic project.

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AN EXECUTIVE BRIEFING FROM EF
How English language skills can
power your global business
STRATEGIC
ENGLISH

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This is about growth
If you’re like most ambitious
businesses, you’re looking beyond
your home market for growth.
That’s good: there’s a massive
opportunity to enter new markets,
grow existing business and create
healthy new revenue streams.
But to really succeed in new markets,
you need to speak the same language
as your prospects – and the single
most important language in global
business today is English.
It’s time to get strategic
Improving your organization’s English
language skills delivers significant
benefits, including:
• Boosting new international sales
• Accelerating market penetration
• Increasing customer satisfaction
and loyalty
• Reducing cross-border inefficiencies
and costs
• Sharing internal knowledge more
effectively
• Positioning your brand as a global player
As important as all these things are,
many companies still regard their
English language training as a low
priority, treating it as little more than
a ‘tick box’ exercise.
That’s a major opportunity for your
company. Because the organizations
that treat English learning as a strategic
goal, and actively manage it as such,
will dramatically out-perform those who
take it less seriously.
This brief ebook is about rising
to the challenge and seizing this
strategic opportunity.

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Introducing
Strategic English
The typical approach to English
language training is unstructured
and unmanaged. It tends to involve:
• Sending your people to local courses
(of variable quality)
• Giving them access to one-size-fits-
all software
• Letting them manage their own progress
• Hoping you’re getting return on
investment rather than ensuring it
In short, while many companies agree
that English language skills are critical
to their success, many still leave them
to chance. Research shows that this is
a high-risk strategy.
In contrast, more and more companies
all over the world are taking a different
approach, by investing in Strategic English.
A better way
There are two key features that
characterize Strategic English:
1. Focusing on the vocabulary and
English language skills that are the
most relevant to your company –
presenting, selling, reading, speaking
etc. It’s about teaching the right things
to the right people.
2. Treating English language development
as a key pillar for corporate success –
then managing and measuring it
accordingly.
Strategic English is about accelerating
the language skills of your most important
people – from senior executives to
customer-facing staff – in a structured
program that achieves your company’s
specific goals.
More than this, it’s also about opening
up new markets, growing market share,
selling more and sharing more, delighting
customers and increasing productivity.
Inshort,
StrategicEng
isabout
accelerating
languageskil

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The impact of
Strategic English
Still not convinced? EF recently
commissioned an independent,
global survey by the Economist
Intelligence Unit into how language
skills impact the competitiveness
of multinational companies.
It’s called Competing Across Borders
– and the results are eye-opening.
Of just under 600 international
companies surveyed:
64% of businesses believe language
and cultural differences are constraining
their international expansion plans.
Almost half reported that communication
misunderstandings have resulted in
financial losses.
And nearly nine out of ten report that
better international communication skills
improve revenues, profits and market share.
With English as the undisputed lingua
franca of international business, it is
evident that English language skills really
do impact your business’s bottom line.
The message is clear: to succeed where
your competitors fail, you need to get
strategic about English language skills.

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Top-performing companies take their English language skills
seriously. Having worked with hundreds of them over many
years, we’ve identified six key principles that characterize
a successful, strategic approach to English learning.
STRATEGIC ENGLISH…
STARTS WITH
GOAL-ORIENTATION
DELIVERS
QUALITY AT SCALE
FOCUSES ON
RELEVANCE
LEVERAGES
TECHNOLOGY
DEMANDS
FLEXIBILITY
DELIVERS
ACCOUNTABILITY
THE PRINCIPLES
OF STRATEGIC
ENGLISH
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STRATEGIC ENGLISH STARTS WITH
GOAL-
ORIENTATION
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Many companies spend a fortune on
language training before they realize
that they’ve been teaching the wrong
things to the wrong people in the
wrong ways.
An effective Strategic English
program always starts with the
goals of the business.
There are as many goals as there are
companies but common drivers for
improving English skills include:
• To enter new international markets
• To improve the skills of customer-
facing staff
• To make sales teams more effective
• To drive internal knowledge sharing
• To accelerate the careers of top
executives
Starting with business goals is the best
way to make the right decisions about
who gets training, what kind of training
they get, how much you’ll invest and
how you’ll measure success.
Program goals
From the wider business goals, you can
then derive the specific goals of your
language training program. These could
be along the lines of:
• Teaching your 200 top sales people
to present in English within a year
• Moving 70% of call center staff to
Level 9 English proficiency by March
• Getting your Finance team
comfortable reading the financial
press in 30 days
• Making your CEO fluent in English
in eight weeks
Goals will vary depending on the roles
of the learners and their current skill levels,
but the most effective goals are those that
include a success metric and a deadline.
Goal-orientation
Key Takeaways
• Before you decide on a budget,
strategy, training supplier or
methodology, identify the key
business goals.
• Develop a set of program goals
that map to the overall business
goals – and get buy-in from top
management.
• Determine specific goals for
different roles in the organization:
think about who needs what.

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STRATEGIC ENGLISH DELIVERS
QUALITY
AT SCALE
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It’s easy to provide expensive,
high-quality personal tuition
to a few board members.
It’s much harder to progress the English
language skills of an entire organization
effectively, in a specified time, on a
limited budget.
Faced with the challenges of a large-
scale English language learning program,
many companies fall into the trap of
focusing predominantly on minimizing
costs and simply go for the cheapest
option: buying bulk licenses of generic
software or giving everyone a small
budget to find their own local training.
These companies soon learn that
prioritizing cost over quality is a false
economy: they quickly find they’ve spent
a lot of money for almost no measurable
improvement and any return on investment
rapidly disappears. In reality, the cost
and quality don’t have to be mutually
exclusive; you just need to think
strategically. The key to Strategic English
is to deliver the highest possible quality
of learning experience to the most people.
This means grouping your people
according to their needs and looking
for solutions that can cater for these
different needs effectively. For example,
some providers can offer a combination
of self-study and teacher-led methods.
Quality at scale
Key Takeaways
• Establish or estimate the
highest number of people who
would benefit from improved
English skills (and deliver
benefits to the company).
• Cluster different learner groups
according to the value of their
English acceleration.
• Think about cost-effective,
scalable programs (usually
online) for the highest number,
mixed with more specialized
training (often teacher-led)
for the highest priority groups.
Putting Saudi students on the right track for university
Saudi Electronic University (SEU) is an innovative provider of e-learning
and distance-learning courses. In particular, they offer an online foundation
course to around 6,000 students annually to prepare them for university.
English is a core subject on the course so they turned to EF for a solution that
provided the quality of content they needed. With our service and support,
SEU students have now taken over 400,000 hours of study. More importantly,
around 75% are on track to improve their English more than two EF levels
in the year – an excellent rate of progress.

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STRATEGIC ENGLISH FOCUSES ON
RELEVANCE
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English proficiency isn’t one single
skill, it’s a combination of listening
comprehension, reading, writing
and speaking.
In a business context, the skills get
even more specialized:
• Sales people need to listen, make
presentations and negotiate.
• Technical professionals need to
understandindustryjournalsandpapers.
• Human resources executives need to be
able to converse with candidates and
work closely with line-of-business heads.
• Manufacturing workers need to follow
the same set of instructions, worldwide,
to deliver the same high quality from
all plants.
• Furthermore, those working in the
pharmaceuticals industry need to
know a very different set of vocabulary
from those working in aviation.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of English
language training programs ignore the
specific needs of each learner and the
unique demands of their jobs.
Strategic English targets the skills that
are most relevant to each learner with
task-based learning that’s created for
each specific role and the industry
you operate in.
This fundamental difference multiplies
the value of Strategic English training
and dramatically accelerates the progress
of each learner. They learn faster because
the training meets their specific needs.
Relevance
Targeting tasks at Air China
Air China has over 36,000 employees serving 60 million domestic and
international passengers. It is the most profitable airline in the world.
In a rapidly globalizing market, they know English language skills will be
central to future success. Working with them, we designed a training policy
and study targets for 1,200 Air China staff, which incorporates teacher-led
private and semi-private lessons in EF’s online school, EF Efekta™
.
They’ve seen immediate benefits. Just three months after the program started,
one manager attendedaglobalconferencesayingthat, had he not taken the
courses, hewouldn’thavehadtheconfidenceto come to the all-English meeting.
Key Takeaways
• Think about the kind of skills
each group of learners needs:
what is the optimal mix of reading,
writing, listening and speaking?
• Identify the job-related tasks
to which each group of learners
most needs to apply fluency.
• Choose a training provider with
task-based learning content and
flexible programs that can be
easily customized to each learner.

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STRATEGIC ENGLISH LEVERAGES
TECHNOLOGY
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For many centuries, languages were
taught in classrooms, by teachers.
While personal interaction with a great
teacher is still a powerful way to develop
English language skills, it has limitations
for large businesses:
• It’s hard for non-specialists to determine
the skill and quality of a teacher.
• In-person teaching is difficult to scale.
• Busy professionals often struggle to
find time for pre-scheduled lessons
resulting in missed classes.
• Class lessons must aim at an ‘average
learner’ rather than adapting for the skills
and learning speed of each learner.
There will always be a role for intensive,
immersive classes and one-on-one tuition
(EF Executive Language Institutes are
prime examples). But in-person methods
alone can’t meet the needs of global
organizations serious about accelerating
English skills across the business.
Strategic English leverages
technology to deliver flexible,
targeted programs that offer
best-practice teaching to the
widest possible learner base.
Technology makes it possible
to bring the teacher to the learner
wherever they may be via virtual
classrooms. Such solutions are
more flexible and scalable than
traditional in-person training
but still retain the human element.
The key is to use technology appropriately
rather than to replace all human teachers
with software packages.
A hybrid approach
Ultimately, companies that achieve rapid
English acceleration tend to combine
self-guided and teacher-led experiences
into targeted, scalable programs.
Technology
Key Takeaways
• Think about combining
technology with teacher-led
learning – in different
proportions for different learners.
• Evaluate learning platforms
for the richness of their content,
relevance of the tasks and
exercises and accessibility
for all learners.
• Beware of one-size-fits-all
software packages that ignore
individual differences and
entirely remove the teachers.
Online can be personal
EF Efekta™
combines task-based interactive self-study with online,
teacher-led conversation classes.
It’s the best of both worlds: the self-paced, always-available online
experience and the personal engagement of a teacher-led class.

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STRATEGIC ENGLISH DEMANDS
FLEXIBILITY
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Just as the needs of each learner are
different, their availability to study
varies widely too:
One CEO knows she will never fit
English study into her busy schedule.
She needs an intensive, residential program
that gets her away from day-to-day activities
for anything from a week to a month.
A time-poor sales executive can only
fit English study into narrow windows
throughout the day.
He needs an online program he can
access from his smartphone.
A call center agent can only practice her
English for half an hour on lunch breaks.
She needs a self-guided study program
supplemented by one online conversation
class per week.
We’ve seen it time and time again:
flexible programs designed to fit with
each learner’s schedule achieve much
higher participation and success rates.
Strategic English is about a solution
that is flexible enough to adapt to the
way each learner needs to learn.
Inflexible programs invariably see the
greatest drop-out rates and slowest skill
development – a fast-track to poor results
and disappointing ROI.
Flexibility
Key Takeaways
• Ask your people how they most
want to learn and when they
expect to fit in their study time.
• Use online programs to fit around
each learner’s schedule.
• For the fastest acceleration,
consider offering senior
executives intensive,
residential programs.

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STRATEGIC ENGLISH DELIVERS
ACCOUNTABILITY
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The learner is not the ultimate
customer of a Strategic English
program: the organization itself is.
Many large companies spend millions
on English language without ever tracking
the return on that investment.
• They take it on trust that each
learner is attending classes or
using their software.
• They assume that participation
equals progress.
• They simply hope their investment
is delivering real benefits to the business.
Strategic English programs measure
the participation and progress of each
learner and report regularly on goal
achievement and ROI.
It’s one thing to say “We bought software
for 100 people.” It’s quite another to say,
“These 50 people spent eight hours a
week in online learning for four straight
weeks and have progressed 10%. But
these ten haven’t logged in for a month.”
Accountability
Key Takeaways
• Make sure whichever learning
provider you choose can track
your key metrics.
• Don’t just measure participation,
measure progress too.
• Track the entire program
against your goals – not just
each learner’s progress.

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GOAL-ORIENTATION
Establish your program
goals based on your
business goals.
QUALITY AT SCALE
Don’t let the sheer number
of learners make you
sacrifice the quality of
learning experience.
RELEVANCE
Make sure each learner
is learning the right
skills and job-related tasks.
TECHNOLOGY
The right technology
platform can accelerate
the entire program.
FLEXIBILITY
Make sure your learning
programs fit around
the people who need
to progress.
ACCOUNTABILITY
Set up participation
and progress metrics
– and track them.
THE PRINCIPLES
OF STRATEGIC
ENGLISH
Recap
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The world’s most successful companies recognize
that English language skills are simply too important
to leave to chance.
For them, Strategic English is a secret growth driver that sets
them apart from their international competitors.
Faster, more effective English language development leads
to a more confident, more effective organization, ready to assert
itself on the global stage.
Sales people sell more. Customer service people understand
customers better. Deal-makers close better deals. And market
share, revenues and profits follow.
In short: it’s time to get strategic.
Conclusion
“Morethantwo
thirdsofexecutives
agreethattheir
workforceneeds
tobeproficient
inEnglishinorder
tomakecross-
borderteams
functionefficiently.”
Competing Across Borders report
The Economist Intelligence Unit

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Corporate Language
Learning Solutions
EF Corporate Language Learning Solutions
delivers online, cloud-based learning
experiences with the Efekta™
school and
runs Executive Language Institutes in
Boston, USA and Cambridge, UK.
Our EF Method™
is the fastest way to
improveEnglishproficiencyandourLearning
Logistics™
approach maximizes the return
on your investment in English learning.
Further Reading
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s
Competing Across Borders: How
cultural and communication barriers
affect business. An independent, global
survey into how language skills impact
the competitiveness of multinational
companies.
The EF Efekta™
Cloud School
Discover our powerful online
learning experience.
EF Executive Language Institutes
Learn about our immersive
residential programs.
The EF Method™
Learn about our unique approach
to English language learning.
Get our Brochure
All you need to know about EF Corporate
Language Learning Solutions.
www.ef-solutions.com
About EF
OurEFMethod™
isth
fastestwaytoimprov
Englishproficiencya
ourLearningLogisti
approachmaximizes
returnonyourinvest
inEnglishlearning.
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