Best Practices

Effective HR Communication Strategies for a Global Team

The workplace is no exception to the necessity of proper communication in order to function properly. With the trend of having a global employee base increasing in popularity, companies are forced to find new ways to optimize communication with their international offices.

Stefan M.

21 min

Today, we'll be going over everything you need to know in order to create the most effective HR communication strategy for your business. Let's dive in!

What is HR?

The Human Resources department ("HR" for short) is a sector of a business tasked with scouting out, recruiting, screening, and training employees.

Responsible for all internal communications within a company, the HR department ensures that the tools and methods of communication employed are conducive to a healthy and productive work environment.

Why is HR Communication Important?

Before we can endeavor into creating an effective HR communications strategy, we need to understand what makes HR communication so important.

Here are some of the things to consider when contemplating the importance of HR communication.

An Effective Communication Strategy Accelerates Company Growth

When it comes to achieving company goals and business objectives, having a comprehensive HR communication strategy goes a long way.

A company is nothing more than a group of people working towards a shared goal, and internal communication is a big part of the process. Having your employees connected by a solid communication strategy increases employee productivity and leads to organizational success.

Communication Builds Relationships and Trust

Making your employees feel like they can communicate with you regardless of their geographic location builds a foundation of trust and respect.

When you prioritize relationships with your employees, financial success will naturally follow. Always Encourage employees to reach out and voice their opinions on company matters. It will drive employee engagement and create a much more productive work environment.

Ineffective Communication Leads to Huge Losses

A 2022 study conducted by Grammarly found that companies lose $12,506 per employee per year due to miscommunication. Annually, that number amounts to $1.2 trillion for U.S. businesses.

Statistics such as these solidify the notion that having proper means of communication integrated into company culture is key to the success of any corporate enterprise. For an HR communications strategy to work on a global scale, special consideration must be given to applying this principle.

4 Types of HR Communication

To help you gain an even better understanding of workplace communication, let's analyze the 4 ways in which information flows within a company.

We can visualize information flow as a moving entity on a 2-dimensional plane. In this scenario, information can travel in 4 directions. They are:

Upward Communication
Downward Communication
Diagonal Communication
Horizontal Communication

Let's briefly go over each one in further detail.

Upward Communication

Upward communication can simply be described as the flow of information from the lower levels of a hierarchy to the upper levels.

In a corporate setting, this would usually refer to employees communicating with upper management in order to provide or receive feedback, make a complaint, give suggestions, or ask for particular instructions or permissions.

Utilizing this form of communication as a part of your HR strategy lets your employees know that they are in an inclusive environment where their input is valued and carefully considered.

Downward Communication

In contrast to upward communication, downward communication involves the flow of information from the top tiers of a company hierarchy down to the lower levels.

Just to provide an example, a project manager sending out e-mails with instructions and briefing material to the members of the team would be considered downward communication. Another one would be a sales team representative receiving a new training course from the HR department.

This form of communication is used to give feedback and form a policy of reciprocal communication and respect with your employees.

Diagonal Communication

Diagonal communication is done by employees of different levels in different chains of command. This means communication between team members with different ranks that are not in the same branch or sector of the company.

A simple example would be communication between a junior developer of a web design sector with the head of the marketing department.

Having this type of communication available to your employees makes the transfer of information much faster and minimizes downtime, resulting in an overall more productive workflow.

Horizontal Communication

Last, but not least, we have horizontal HR communications.

As you probably might have guessed, horizontal HR communications involve the exchange of information between employees of the same level, usually from different sectors.

In a work environment, it would be things like department-wide meetings and planning sessions between coworkers. An HR manager discoursing with an accounting manager would constitute this type of communication.

Developing an Effective HR Communication Strategy

Now that we've gone through the basics, let's go over the elements of a potent HR communications strategy, and how you can implement them in your company in order to improve internal communications.

Defining Your HR Communication Channels

In order to have good communication in the workplace and keep your employees informed, you must first define the channels through which you will exchange information

Luckily, there are plenty of digital communication channels that make employee communications quick and effective. Those are things like:

E-Mails
Internal Communication Platforms
Employee Collaboration Software

Additionally, you can use mediums such as a company intranet and company blogs and forums to facilitate communication in the workplace and improve employee productivity.

Employee Segmentation

Defining your employee segments can give you valuable insight into improving HR communication in your company. This is especially true when working with a global team as you can group your employees based on parameters such as geographical area, time zone, and language.

Having this type of data stored in a central location is a great way to help your HR and communications teams improve HR communication globally by taking into account the factors that characterize each employee group.

Considering Language and Cultural Barriers

While working with a global team does have many merits, it comes with certain difficulties as well. It is more than likely that not all of your foreign employees will possess the level of English fluency required for communication in a work setting.

When creating a global communication strategy, it is helpful to have at least 2 methods of overcoming this issue. Some of the most popular options include using HR translation software, working with professional translators, and offering language courses to your employees.

Efficient Scheduling

Hosting regular meetings and conference calls with your global employee base is a great way to recap, reassess, and find ways to overcome obstacles. However, that can be a bit tricky when working with foreign employees.

Making sure to create a schedule that all employees can follow makes for a much more efficient communication strategy that minimizes downtime and improves productivity.

Determining the Costs of a Communication Strategy

When creating an effective communication strategy, always calculate the costs required for its realization. A well-defined budget plan helps you keep track of company expenses as well as gives you valuable insight into how you can further improve HR communication on a global level.

The costs to consider here are things like software subscription fees, costs of communication channel maintenance, and the salaries of staff tasked with operating internal communication technology

HR Communication and Employee Retention

According to a study conducted by Firstup, 33% of employees feel unrecognized and socially excluded in the workplace, making it one of the primary reasons for quitting their job. This issue is particularly augmented when dealing with a global team.

Improving communication with your foreign employees not only increases employee satisfaction but is also an integral part of workplace culture and should be considered a crucial element of company policy.

One of the best ways to achieve this is to frequently contemplate employee feedback and conduct employee satisfaction surveys. Make it easy for your foreign employees to communicate with you and express their needs and opinions.

Employee Engagement Relies on HR Communications

According to a study by Gallup on employee engagement, 70% of employee engagement is solely dependent on the manager.

Employee engagement is one of the most important factors contributing to a company's overall growth and business outcomes. Making sure that employees have a thorough understanding of their tasks should be a priority for the HR team.

If your company results are lacking, take the time to talk to your HR professionals about whether or not this principle is appropriately applied in your company's day-to-day business communications.

Additional Tips

Here are some additional do's and don'ts to help you optimize your HR strategy for a global team.

DO Be Cognizant of Time Zones

Having a global team always encompasses working with people in different time zones. Handling time differences in an appropriate manner means considering the working hours of each team member in relation to their respective time zone.

An effective way of maneuvering through this difficulty is having a central database of each employee in your global team and their working hours relative to your time zone. Making this information base available to your HR staff makes global communication much easier.

DO Include International Employees in Company Celebrations

Oftentimes, a company will celebrate a particular holiday that is not celebrated in the countries of their foreign employees. This can leave your foreign colleagues feeling left out.

In good faith, always make sure to send e-mails and other tokens of appreciation to all of your employees regardless of whether or not they celebrate the same holidays as you do.

DO Organize Events for Global Teams

While both written communication and video conferencing form the foundation of company communication, organizing events where your worldwide team can meet face-to-face is a great way to connect with employees and enrich company culture.

Granted, this does take a lot of planning and resources. If your company is ever in a position to host events that accommodate global teams, it is a great way to stimulate worker engagement and improve workplace communication.

DON'T Use Humor Carelessly

When communicating with colleagues native to a different culture, always think about how humor will be interpreted. A witty statement might be amusing between you and your friends just as much as it might be offensive to a foreigner.

This also includes the usage of things like gifs and memes in written business communication. While there is nothing wrong with building rapport through laughs and giggles, always prelude that with consideration of whom you are speaking with.

DON'T Use Slang or Jargon

Using slang and jargon in business communication can not only come across as unprofessional but can also create unnecessary confusion and misunderstanding. This is especially true when communicating with colleagues who speak your native language as their second or third.

Limiting your use of slang and jargon when talking to people outside your office is a good way to improve your HR communication strategy. You can even go as far as making it a part of company policy.

DON'T Stereotype Employees

In general, assuming stereotypes of your foreign colleagues is a big red flag, even if the stereotypes are positive. Avoid making assumptions about people you are cooperating with in a corporate setting, as it can only create discomfort.

A good rule of thumb is to ask rather than to assume. Asking about an employee's culture and tradition is a great way to build rapport and create familiarity with the employee.

The Future of Human Resources

With internal communications and employee engagement becoming such an integral part of a company's growth process, it's easy to see why so many companies are committing time and resources in order to improve HR communication.

New digital communication tools are being developed with each passing year. As technology continues to evolve, it is likely that we'll see new methods for creating effective HR communication strategies and increasing employee satisfaction rise to prominence.

For this very reason, it is extremely beneficial for any company to keep up with new HR trends. You never know when you might run into something perfectly suited for your HR and communication teams.

How Bureau Works Can Help Your HR Operations

A slow onboarding process, poor communication, and a lack of multilanguage HR communications strategy are a few things HR teams have to deal with all the time.

Luckily, Bureau Works is a bridge connecting employees with HR teams by providing effective translation services. Bureau Works will help you translate company news, key messages, and all of the company documents that will allow your HR team members to communicate effectively with new employees, no matter what country they're from.

Both written and verbal communication in the workplace will definitely lead to improved productivity and a better bottom line in the long run. If you want to know more about how Bureau Works can improve internal communications, connect employees, and empower HR departments go and download this white paper.

Closing Thoughts

It doesn't matter if you are a novice entrepreneur or a CEO of a major company, finding ways to improve your communication with the people you work with will always take you one step further towards your goals.

We hope this article has helped you gain a better understanding of human resources, wishing you the best of luck in future business endeavors!

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Collaborative translation is a powerful tool for your business if you’re looking to expand to new global markets. By coordinating a team of professionals who work together in real-time, you can quickly deliver high quality translations that resonate with local audiences.

But what if you don't know how to synchronize a large team's efforts? Or are you‌ struggling to find the right software for a well-coordinated translation process? Well, look no further! In this guide, you'll learn all the know-how's of collaborative translation to bring your brand to global audiences.

Overview

What is collaborative translation?
Why seamless translation collaboration is important
Best practices for collaborative translation and global market success

What is collaborative translation?

Collaborative translation is when multiple people simultaneously work together to translate content. A collaborative translation process often makes use of specialized tools and software to make sure the translation is quick, accurate, and consistent.

Example: Let's say you're a B2B SaaS company looking to translate your marketing materials into a new language to connect with potential clients abroad. Use collaborative translation to bring together translators, developers, and other specialists to translate content into many languages at once.

Your team can use a collaborative translation platform like Redokun to work on projects simultaneously. A coordinated workflow will make sure that your translations use the same terminology and style, improving the quality of the translated product for your target audiences.

Collaborative Translation vs. Crowdsourcing

People often confuse collaborative translation with crowdsourcing and think the two are the same. However, these approaches to translation are different.

Crowdsourcing is when a large group of people contributes translations, often through an open call or invitation by a company or author. Brands can turn to crowdsourcing, community translation, or volunteer translation when they are looking to reduce costs and accelerate the process, especially for large multi-language projects.

In crowdsourced translations, the contributors can be volunteer translators, subject matter experts, or just anonymous individuals online. In other words, you may not know who's worked on the translation and what their qualifications are. It makes crowdsourcing distinct from collaborative translation, where the team would be an established group of professionals you've selected

Why seamless translation collaboration is important

As a busy B2B/B2C marketing manager or project manager, you might ask yourself: Isn't the "divide and conquer" a better strategy when working on a translation or localization project? It seems logical that each project team member, including translators, designers, and editors, works on their tasks separately and step by step.

However, collaborative translation can help your team reap many benefits compared to a traditional approach to translation projects:

Reasons why seamless translation collaboration is important

Produce high-quality translations consistently. When your whole team works on a translation project simultaneously on one platform, it's easier to stay in context and keep track of the translation accuracy for every target language. On top of that, your team can conduct agile QA throughout the project cycle.
‍Faster turnaround times. By working together, your team can complete projects faster and more efficiently. Centralization saves a lot of time at every stage of translation. And since your team can work on more than one translation at a time, you can publish your translated content in several new markets at once.
‍Reduced costs. You get to improve efficiency while working with a smaller team of translators. The smaller and more coordinated the team, the less the risk of costly translation errors. It means reduced translation costs and better project budget compliance.
‍Increased flexibility. Collaborative translation allows your team to produce translations into many languages at once and easily make changes to any project document. You can conveniently engage in a feedback loop and guarantee a continuous localization process.
‍Better communication. Collaborative translation effectively brings all members of your localization team together on one platform. It helps you make sure that everyone is working toward the same goals ‌and simplifies overall localization management.

Six best practices for collaborative translation and global market success

To be great at collaborative translation, you need to approach it strategically. Even if you've never used this approach before, you can follow the six steps below to build an efficient collaborative translation workflow. And if you're already familiar with this method, these practices will help you improve the way you collaborate on any translation projects.

Six best practices for collaborative translation for your global business success

1. Work out a detailed project plan

Before you start working on translations together, you need a clear-cut project plan. You should first identify the following items.

Project timeline: Define crucial deadlines, project milestones, and the overall project duration.
Translation volume and key deliverables: Calculate the general word count, and determine the workload for every language pair if you translate into multiple languages.
Project budget: Keep in mind possible added and hidden translation costs.
Project team: Define what kind of specialists you need: translators, editors, proofreaders, etc. Will you need to find external translators? Consider all your HR needs in advance.
Your approach to the translation process: How much do you want to rely on machine translation? At what point will you edit translated strings? Answer all these questions before you go on.
Quality assurance protocol: Establish an efficient QA procedure for all the language pairs you're working on.

It may sound like a handful but the more detailed the plan, the more streamlined the translations will be down the road. Besides, you can already use Redokun to boost this stage of the localization process!

Redokun is a translation management system you can use to automate, coordinate, and optimize your translation processes from content creation to publication.

Redokun simplifies your project planning. In particular, you can use the tool to:

Monitor your ongoing translations easily. Keep track of all of your translation files and projects across multiple languages in one space, and check their progress at a glance.

Meet deadlines with digest emails. Redokun will send you daily or weekly email digests to update you on the progress of translations. From there, you can initiate one-click reminders to your translators who are potentially falling behind schedule.
Making budget planning easier. Redokun has a transparent, scalable pricing structure that will cover exactly the volume of work your project needs.

Redokun is an easy-to-use tool that requires no onboarding. Your team can start using all the system’s features right away. During your project planning stage, you won’t need to factor in a lengthy training period to introduce team members to the tool.

2. Divide tasks and assign responsibilities the smart way

Good collaboration is impossible without a well-planned distribution and organization of roles and tasks. Ensure that every team member is on the same page and understands their respective responsibilities.

For example, the project managers should divide ‌translation tasks among translation team members according to their language proficiency, area of expertise, or subject matter knowledge.

On Redokun, you can invite translators to work on different language pairs and content types depending on their skills. All you need to do is enter the translator's email. The software will send them an email invitation and let you know once they've started translating the file.
You can also invite several translators to work on one document.

To maximize the efficiency of project management and task division, establish a clear structure of your workflow. Make sure all your pages, files, and folders are well organized and team members know where to find necessary resources for their respective tasks. A centralized, cloud-based storage for all your documents is a must.

Redokun is a cloud-based software that makes file management easy. You can create folders and customize permission settings for multiple users for better organization. No more need to look for spreadsheets and lost documents scattered around different digital locations.
Don't forget to make the most of the Reporting Dashboard. It shows you the status of the translation project and helps you see how users distribute tasks (for example, what methods they use to translate different content segments).

Redokun Dashboard with translation statistics

3. Enhance the collaborative translation process with clear communication

It's important to have open communication channels among all team members in your translation project, including internal and external translators. For a successful collaboration effort, you need a shared communication space to:

Conduct regular check-ins.
Discuss translation options and other aspects of the working process.
Update and adjust requirements and guidelines.
Maintain feedback loops.

It's up to you to choose between email, messengers, or tools like Google Drive or Slack to keep your collboarative operations flowing. However, using multiple channels for different aspects of the project can get messy. It's harder to manage your team and make sure all collaborators are up to date on the ongoing translation tasks.

You can avoid these potential problems by centralizing all your communications and project management. With translation software like Redokun, you can manage, translate, communicate, and collaborate — all in one place.

Translate content in context. Your translators or editors can use page previews in Web Editor to understand the context of the text while working on it.
Work together in real-time. Use Redokun as a full-scale collaborative translation platform. It enables real-time cooperation among your team members, improving efficiency and reducing communication errors.
Use comments, mentions, and notifications to exchange feedback quickly. Redokun's Web Editor is a convenient place to stay in touch and discuss your translation progress every step of the way.

Create a hybrid workflow. Work with your in-house teams or external translators to suit different localization project formats and scalability needs.

4. Use machine translation and translation memory tools

Computer-assisted translation tools are a great addition to human translation. Machine translation (MT) helps your collaborators speed up the localization process by automating translation. Of course, it doesn't have the quality of a human professional translation — it’s more like a helping hand that's always there to facilitate the translation of complex phrases or new terms.

Redokun is integrated with two Machine Translation tools: Google Translate and DeepL. Translation suggestions by these two tools pop up right below where the translator should key in the translation, as shown here.

To enhance collaboration even further, consider using translation memory tools. They ensure consistency and save translation software users a lot of time.

Translation memory (TM) is a translation technology that stores previously translated sentences or phrases as segments and creates a unique database for your localization projects. You can reuse your translation to increase efficiency and consistency in ongoing and future translations.

With Redokun as your collaborative translation platform, you can leverage TM to:

Consistently translate any repeated word, phrase, or sentence across different language pairs and documents. It's especially important for translating technical terms, marketing slogans, CTAs, and other catchphrases. Translation memory helps you stay consistent in your marketing messaging.
Pre-translate your entire documents. Combine TM matches from your previous translations with Machine Translation to get a fully pre-translated document even before your team gets to work.
Manage your translation memory database. Import and customize your TM database to further improve translation quality and consistency.

”The speed of translation is quite impressive in that it doesn’t take [much time], maybe a couple of minutes when you translate from English to eight markets. I think that’s what I’m most impressed by.”

Read more about how Kenni and the marketing team at Rockfon increased their translation productivity by 70% using translation memories and other Redokun features here.

5. Use glossaries and style guides

Glossaries and style guides are valuable resources your team can use for reliable reference.

A glossary is a list of terms and their corresponding translations that are specific to a company or industry.

A style guide outlines the preferred tone, voice, and style for a company's marketing materials across markets and languages.

Your collaborators can refer to these resources when they’re not sure about a translation. For example is when they're deciding how to translate a company abbreviation, whether to the Oxford comma, or choosing the right tone to address customers, etc. No more ambiguity about linguistic, stylistic, and cultural aspects of your translations.

Use Redokun's glossary feature to create a glossary and style guide that outlines rules for spelling, grammar, punctuation, terminology, and tone specific to your project.

6. Continuously review and revise

A key benefit of a collaborative translation platform is the ability to review and revise translations in an agile and efficient manner. By involving multiple specialists in the process of editing and QA, you can guarantee accuracy and consistency in the translated content at every stage of the project.

To implement effective review and revision procedures in your collaborative translation projects, it is important to:

Plan for review and revision in advance. Identify who will be responsible, set the timeline, and use specific tools.
Consider involving in-country reviewers who are familiar with the local market and culture to ensure that the translations are accurate and appropriate for the target audience.
Perform regular QA checks. They should include consistency in terminology and formatting, and verify that the translations are free from grammatical errors and typos.

Pro-tip: Ever experienced the headache of having to update a translation that’s already 70% done when there is a last-minute change to the source document?

With Redokun’s revision feature, you don’t have to spend hours poring over Excel sheets and comparing files to spot the places where new words have been added or sentences have been changed. Just upload the latest document version and the system will identify new text that needs translating — saving your team’s time and effort while keeping previous translations intact.

Summary

Collaborative translation is an excellent approach if you want to improve the consistency of your translations, reduce costs, and establish a strong presence in global markets.

The key to seamless collaboration is a combination of careful planning, role distribution, agile QA, and smart use of translation software.

Make Redokun part of your collaborative translation efforts and enhance the pace of your global business growth‌. Start your 14-day free trial today and benefit from a quicker and more streamlined translation workflow.

Till next time,

Anastasia

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