Multilingualism plays a crucial role in the international and globalised economy. It also poses challenges for communication within companies but also for communicating with external partners. As a result, companies make language policy decisions – whether consciously or unconsciously –and take measures to deal with linguistic diversity in the corporate context and in corporate communication. These range from monolingual corporate language designs, to different language classes or language promotion programmes, to unregulated multilingual practices. Knowledge of the corporate language can become a hiring criterion for prospective employees. Chosen linguistic practices therefore can lead to diversity and inclusion but also to discrimination and exclusion.

The panel discussion “The multilingual workforce – challenges and opportunities” brings together experts from different organisations and professional contexts who deal with those language policy decisions and their consequences for firms and their employees. The discussion seeks to explain the dimensions of multilingualism in corporate communication and explores which attitudes can be taken by different stakeholders and which challenges but also opportunities arise for organisations through multilingual practices.