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British Airways gets the language advantage!

British Airways were awarded a UK National Language for Exports Award in 2001 and a European Award for Languages in 2002 for their work with languages both at work and in the community. Manuela Minger of the BA Community Learning Centre, explains the language strategy that was in place in 2001 by recounting their statement of achievement for the National Language for Exports Award in 2001 - and shows how languages can impact a company's financial performance.

BA's mission is to be the undisputed leader in world travel.

In the past decade, BA realised that commercial success depended on providing excellent service to all customers, and therefore recognising a wide range of cultures and languages.

Over the years, we have introduced initiatives to improve the service provided to non-English speaking customers, including the following:

- Recruitment of cabin crew based abroad to provide linguistic assistance to non-English speaking passengers on high revenue routes. There are currently 16 bases.

- The creation of a department on the ground to meet and assist non-English speaking customers: BAVS (BA Visitors Services). BAVS currently employ 140 staff divided into 15 cultural teams based at Heathrow and Gatwick airports. They can assist passengers in 50 different languages, including a wide range of African, Indian and Chinese languages and dialects.

There is a wide range of facilities to support customer service staff interested in maintaining their language skills or acquiring new ones:

- a new language test (Flag Test) for cabin crew and ground staff in an increasing number of languages: 23 at present, including Sign Language.

- language tuition for front-line staff in French, Spanish, Italian and German.

- a wide range of computer based programmes, including BA's own CD-ROM: Plane Talking, available in 53 Open Learning Centres (QUEST centres) around the world.

Following the interest on a national scale for our testing programme, we are currently working with EdExcel towards the National Accreditation of our Flag Award.

A language test was introduced in the selection process for cabin crew in 1995. This highlighted a desperate shortage of language skills in this country and BA had to advertise abroad, in countries such as France, Germany, Holland and Italy. This approach proved to be very effective in providing the right number of new recruits with language skills.

In 1994, out of a total cabin crew of 12,000 there were 1438 language speakers (12%). By 2001, language speakers had risen three-fold to 34% of the total cabin crew at that time. Take a look at the 1994 graph and the 2001 graph>>

However, it highlighted a problem that BA was willing to help tackle - the need to change the attitude of youngsters in the UK to learning languages. Young people are growing-up in a globally competitive environment in which the knowledge of languages will enhance their employment opportunities.

British Airways was awarded a European Award for Languages in 2002 for their work with languages in the community.

In 1996, BA started to promote languages in schools and colleges around Heathrow and Gatwick, as part of our efforts to meet our corporate goal to be a "Good Neighbour". We aimed to raise awareness of the need for language skills in the marketplace. An extensive language programme features prominently amongst the activities of the BA Community Learning Centre which was officially opened by Estelle Morris, Minister of State for School Standards, in October 1999.

We offer:
- Presentations in schools, colleges and universities.
- Language workshops in French, Spanish, Italian and German for all levels from Primary and Secondary Education at the BA Community Learning Centre.
- Language Open Days with a cultural input.
- Ad-hoc courses for adults
- Training for language teachers and assistants to deliver the BA Flag Award Test in their schools.
- The BA Flag Award and Advanced Flag Award in 17 languages: French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Gujarati, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Arabic, Somali, English and British Sign Language. The range of languages is aimed at representing the languages that are important for our business as well as those taught in schools, including a wide range of community languages.

Our language activities in the Community Learning Centre have generated much interest from the start and been featured in the local press as well as the Times Educational Supplement.

Following the interest on a national scale for our testing programme, we are currently seeking National Accreditation of our Flag Award.

Since its opening, the BA Community Learning Centre has achieved the following:
- supported the European Year of Languages 2001
- sponsored a Japanese Speech Contest for Secondary Schools presented by ALL's Japanese Language Committee, as part of Japan 2001
- presented 19 British Airways Language Awards for Excellence to children, teachers and BA staff in 2002
- trained 84 teachers and 65 foreign language assistants to deliver the BA Flag Award test
- presented 1,139 people in the local community (mainly in schools and colleges around Heathrow and Gatwick) with a BA Flag Award
- trained 4,211 youngsters to achieve effective communication in a foreign language
- forged links with national organisations including CILT, the LNTO and the Nuffield Languages Programme

Several factors, both internal and external, affect the performance of a global company like ours and we cannot look at the investments in the language policy in isolation. However, sales figures show a link between the range and standard of the language services on offer and commercial success.

There was a 29% increase in Quality Net Revenue in 2001 (versus 2000) for the South Asia routes and again a 22% increase in QNR for the same time period for the West Africa routes. Take a look at the graph of sales figures for all regions here>>

We notice that the markets that are performing best are also the ones that benefit from a reliable and consistent language service, including overseas based cabin crew on dedicated key routes and the presence of the BAVS team on arrival in the UK.

It emerges from the above figures that whereas we cannot establish clearly whether our language policy has generated new revenue, the service provided by language speakers in BA uniform is essential to protect the revenue from our key markets.

These figures reinforce our belief that we cannot ignore the 60% of our customers who do not have English as their first language without putting our business at risk.

If you would like to find out more about this article and how British Airways have used their language advantage, then please email us at info@languageadvantage.com

To find out more about British Airways, then visit their website at www.britishairways.com

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