There has been a debate in the Swedish press the past few days, because in the company where I'm working, the decision has been made in one of the traffic areas that the employees should only speak Swedish.
I think it's a very delicate topic, especially as about 60 nationalities are represented among the company.
The main point there was that when the employees are gathering in the "rest area", no one feels excluded in the case where some other employees from a different nationality would speak another language than Swedish.
That's a good point.
However, from my experience - and I've been in this situation quite a lot the past 1,5 year - I'm not 100% sure that you need to make people sign a paper asking them to only speak Swedish at work. At least that's maybe not the most pedagogic way to do it.
I might be a bit naive, but I think that it's pretty natural that when some people from different nationalities are together, they use a language that everyone can understand. In my case that's English, in this one that would be Swedish then.
What do you think about it?
I think it's a very difficult subject and I don't really know where to stand because I also think that it's very easy to create confusion and that some people feel some excluded - either because they are not allowed to speak their own language, or because they wouldn't understand what some people from another nationality say when talk together.
Do you think it’s the role of the company to set that kind of language rule? Or maybe that it should try to educate its employees ?
Of course I would be more in favor of the second option. But is it realistic?
For the Swedish speaking people, here is the article I'm talking about : http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/bara-svenska-for-bussforare
Thanks for your contribution :)
*Only Swedish ?
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