Do bilingual people get paid more than monolingual individuals? Should you pay your bilingual employees more money for their world language skills? Bilingual differential pay is a topic you must consider as you seek to pay your employees fairly and attract more bilingual talent to your team.
Test Your Employees’ Language Skills
Many employees and potential employees who know two or more languages wonder if they could get paid more for being bilingual. The short answer is yes. Bilingual workers undeniable value to a business and should be paid more if they use their language skills daily to complete required tasks. On average, those who are bilingual and multilingual earn 5%-20% more per hour than those who aren’t. Here is some information to help you understand the value of bilingual employees and how to establish a bilingual pay differential policy.
The Benefits of Bilingual Employees
Bilingual employees offer many benefits to the businesses they work for. More companies have realized this in recent years, with the demand for bilingual and multilingual employees more than doubling between 2010 and 2015. Even with today’s uptick in remote working situations, roles that require bilingual language skills continue to increase.
Here are some of the main benefits bilingual employees bring to businesses:
- Better customer connections: Over 75% of customers report being more likely to buy a product if information about it is available in their native language. Bilingual employees can ensure more customers get the information they need about a product in a language they understand. This makes customers feel more comfortable and allows for a deeper relationship with your brand.
- Successful expansion into new territories: Companies that want to expand their business operations into other countries need bilingual employees for proper communication, planning, and growth.
- Money savings: Bilingual employees can translate important documents and accurately engage in critical correspondence. In addition to reducing the chances of costly communication errors, hiring bilingual employees will also let you skip engaging costly third-party translators.
- Multi-tasking and problem-solving abilities: Individuals proficient in more than one language can process information more efficiently than their monolingual peers. This may contribute to better problem-solving and multi-tasking abilities in your teams.
Why Pay Bilingual Employees More
There are many reasons your company should pay bilingual employees more. Most importantly, higher compensation for employees who command multiple languages recognizes the value they bring to a company and helps businesses stay competitive in the rapidly changing global economy. Here are additional benefits of establishing a bilingual pay differential policy at your company:
- Relationships: Successful businesses make lasting relationships with their members and customers. Bilingual employees can help your company forge diverse relationships that it would otherwise be unable to achieve, both domestically and internationally.
- Hiring: Having a bilingual pay differential policy will attract more bilingual employees to your business. If you’re looking to hire more employees with world language skills beside English, then offering qualified candidates more money could be the factor that draws them to your business instead of another.
- Regulation compliance: Incentivizing bilingual workers to your business with a pay differential can help you follow regulations. Regulations like Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandate that people, including employees and customers, have equal access to services despite their language preferences. Having workers who command multiple languages will help you follow these regulations.
How to Set up a Bilingual Pay Differential
Setting up a bilingual pay differential starts with asking and answering these important questions:
- Which positions must be bilingual?
- What languages do you need employees to be proficient in?
- Does a certain position require a specific world language?
- What is the minimum level of language proficiency a qualified candidate should possess?
- Do candidates need to possess speaking, reading, writing or listening skills — or a combination of each?
- Do any existing employees speak the required languages?
- What percentage of work tasks will occur in other languages?
- Who will create and complete the bilingual pay differential policy?
- Which parties must approve the policy before implementation?
- Does any information need to be presented to these parties?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you’re ready to set up your company’s bilingual pay differential.
Language Testing International (LTI), the sole provider of ACTFL language proficiency assessments, offers support throughout this process with our Task Analysis procedure. We’ll help you determine the required minimum proficiency levels needed for your bilingual roles and work with you to create a language assessment plan to meet the reporting and assessment needs of your clients and work roles. With our help, you can qualify actual talent for your company’s bilingual positions.
Set up Skills and Testing Requirements
Once you’re ready to begin developing your bilingual pay differential policy, you must determine your skills and testing requirements. Language proficiency tests provide objective results on an employee’s or potential employee’s second language skills. By setting test results requirements, you’ll have a benchmark when hiring bilingual employees. This will show interested candidates what minimum proficiency level they must have to qualify for the higher pay.
ACTFL proficiency tests through LTI are the industry standard for measuring world language proficiency. Depending on the bilingual role specifications, have candidates take tests for one or more of the following skills:
- Reading
- Writing
- Listening
- Speaking
Reliable language proficiency assessments, such as those developed by ACTFL, help eliminate subjectivity and bias. By using standardized testing methods, you ensure a fair recruitment process as all candidates are measured against the same criteria. Test results will be objective, verifiable, and reliable according to your chosen proficiency scale. This will help you gain accurate insights into someone’s bilingual proficiency during the hiring process.
Select Cut Scores for Pay Differentials
The cut score refers to the minimum acceptable passing score of a given language skill proficiency test. Cut scores are essential in finding the right candidates to fill your job openings. You need bilingual employees with the right combination of language skills to meet your goals, so accepting a candidate with low proficiency may be out of the question, depending on your organization’s needs.
Potential job candidates must earn a proficiency test score higher than your company’s set cut score to qualify for the position. This process will help you hire confidently, knowing your new employees have the bilingual language skills you’re looking for in reading, writing, listening, or speaking.
Put Together a Written Policy
Every organization will have a different bilingual payment differential policy, but most businesses will need to put it in writing for it to be official. Your written policy should outline all the necessary steps to attaining the payment differential. It should also include the testing requirements, like which test to take and what provider can administer the test.
The policy should include details about every layer of your organization, including hiring, payroll, training, organization, and timekeeping. The differential you award to qualified bilingual employees will generally be a calculated percentage added to an equivalent monolingual salary. You can also add the differential as a flat sum awarded every pay period.
Language Testing through Language Testing International
Language Testing International offers ACTFL proficiency tests for organizations to help you measure bilingual language skills in your employees and potential employees. And with our Task Analysis procedure, we can help you develop a functional and efficient plan for achieving a working bilingual payment differential policy. Contact us today to take the next step!
