English in the workplace: Rakuten

In 2010, Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder and CEO of Rakuten, Japan's leading online retail company, announced that English would now be their working language. For his 10, 000 employees worldwide, this meant that from now on everything would be in English; every email, conversation, document - even the menu in the company cafeteria. Mr. Mikitani called this process "Englishnization". His employees were given two years to improve their English. Within two years every employee had to pass a TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication). Those who failed would be demoted, which means to give someone a lower rank or a less important job.

Imagine that you walked into your workplace tomorrow morning, only to learn that your company has decided to change its official working language to English!

1. From the perspective of the leaders of the company, why do you think they have decided to change to English? Write a list of five positive consequences.
2. From the perspective of yourself as an employee of the company, what challenges will this change lead to? Write a list of five possible challenges or negative consequences.
3. Compare and contrast your results with the rest of the class. The digital discussion board Talkwall (Norw. Samtavla) could be a very useful tool here. It is free to use and has been developed for schools by the University of Oslo. Here is a 3 min. introduction video that explains the basics of Talkwall.

Professor Tsedal Neeley from Harvard Business School studied the process of "Englishnization" at Rakuten. In this TED-talk she explains how Rakuten's new language policy succeeded by separating English from its cultural contexts.

This is a very different approach to language learning in schools. At school, you learn English by studying the culture of English-speaking countries. You study historical events, learn about political systems, listen to English music, read English texts and watch English movies. Professor Neeley contrasts this to a way of learning English, in which English is seen more as a technical skill. It is a way of communicating in order to boost productivity and efficiency in the workplace.

A comment on the language in this TED-talk: the language in this talk is at times quite advanced. Make sure that you watch it with English subtitles and take note of any difficult words or expressions so that you can look them up in a dictionary afterwards.