Restaurant Social Media
English vs. Spanish
As our company continues to grow, hire, turnover, and hire more; we are getting more and more requests for training materials, legal forms, postings, and menus that are translated into Spanish.
I remember one day in our corporate office one of our Associates called about his W-2 (tis the season) he only spoke Spanish and we had no one to help this person because we are all ignorant enough (or are we?) not to remember any of our classes that we took in high school and college about Spanish.
I for one took four years of the language, and today speak only rough kitchen Spanish. I know that our department has tried to develop our own Spanish materials for the Kitchen mostly out of several stores employing most Spanish speaking cooks. I have to admit that once we thought that we had it all right, we actually took our materials to a kitchen and asked our Associates who spoke Spanish if everything is right.
As days pass on we get more and more requests for Spanish translated materials for our restaurants. Since non of us are fluent in the language, I hate to admit it, we tend to push those TO DO's off to the side and focus on what we refer to as "bigger apples" in our world.
SO the question remians; in an English dominant environment (atleast for now) how do we support our Associates who speak Spanish and only a little English?
I remember one day in our corporate office one of our Associates called about his W-2 (tis the season) he only spoke Spanish and we had no one to help this person because we are all ignorant enough (or are we?) not to remember any of our classes that we took in high school and college about Spanish.
I for one took four years of the language, and today speak only rough kitchen Spanish. I know that our department has tried to develop our own Spanish materials for the Kitchen mostly out of several stores employing most Spanish speaking cooks. I have to admit that once we thought that we had it all right, we actually took our materials to a kitchen and asked our Associates who spoke Spanish if everything is right.
As days pass on we get more and more requests for Spanish translated materials for our restaurants. Since non of us are fluent in the language, I hate to admit it, we tend to push those TO DO's off to the side and focus on what we refer to as "bigger apples" in our world.
SO the question remians; in an English dominant environment (atleast for now) how do we support our Associates who speak Spanish and only a little English?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Joshua Huth on -
I think the biggest thing is that we realize that we really do have the resources available. We have many Spanish speaking people in our current systems that are developed and know their jobs. Most of those people speak English fairly well and would love to take on more responibility. Not to stereotype but most Spanish speaking team members are very proud and take their jobs seriously. Get your director of field ops out there to find a few people to help the training department get the job done. We talk about utilizing our people every day in the field; the same should be true for the Corporate Office as well.
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Permalink Reply by Amanda Vroom on -
I hear ya on using the poeple who do the job everyday.
I guess the biggest thing is making the time to go out into the field and shop your resources that are in the restaurants. As a corporate identity I find myself struggling to stay in touch with my former operations skills so I don't become obsolite. I pride myself on being in the field and working with both Managers and Associates.
Maybe if there were just four more hours in a day I could get it all done AND find resources in the field! LOL -
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