Economic science/5. Human resources management

Postgraduate student, Savinova Anna Leonidovna

Mordovia State University, Russia, Mordovia Republic, Saransk

The significance of the foreign languages knowledge on the employment and the sphere of labour.

In modern world the sphere of labour is highly connected with economic and social fields. This sphere includes the labour market and its usage in the social production. The labour market consists of occupational pattern, the dynamics of employment, the mobility of the labour force, the extent of unemployment.

The modern realities show that enterprises face new tasks connected with the increase of production efficiency. The leaders of the enterprises search for the sources of enlarging their company’s quality of life. Among one of these sources, obviously, is the rise in the qualitative characteristics of labour potential. Traditionally, while analysing the above said labour potential, scientists mtook into account, first of all, the level of professional and qualifying readiness of people. There we should mention the employee’s level of education, age, turnover of the length of service and etc.

At present Russia is on the swift movement to the transition to market relations, and this will entail serious difficulties, and as a result social and economic problems. The market demands a completely new level of labour relations. Consequently, the employer makes new, higher demands while employing a worker.

These demands, of course, vary from one enterprise to another. But even taking into consideration different spheres of employment, one can make the following conclusion: the contemporary world tend to increase the amount of labour force with the knowledge of at least one foreign language. If somebody wants to work in a big international company this knowledge is a compulsory criterion of employment. We should also mention there that the knowledge of a foreign language is still a rare phenomenon in Russia. According to the data of the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs only 1.3% of Russian population know another language except Russian.

In accordance with the research conducted among the audience attending the courses of foreign languages, we can make the following conclusions: 61% of the audience attend classes because they want to make progress in their career ladder, 25% - for the training or studying courses, 10% - for travelling abroad and 4% of the audience attend lessons because they think it is necessary in the modern world, or just for their personal development. (This research was conducted in the International School of Foreign Languages “Denis’s School” in Omsk, Russia.)

So, looking at the results in the previous paragraph, one can see that for majority of people the main stimulus is their work. And the need for specialists knowing more than one language is dramatically increasing. Earlier this rule was mainly applied to lawyers and economists. Nowadays, it seems necessary for the employment of builders, workers of production speciality and even unskilled laboures.

Undoubtedly, one should understand that to have the knowledge of the informal language is not enough, if you, for example, apply for a position of a physicist in a big company. Therefore, it is brilliant if you know the technical, medical, juridical, etc. spheres of a language. Having these skills in addition to the main speciality, increases your chances to get a prestigious place of work.

The question about what language to study is still very important. One can not predict what foreign language will be useful for the successful career ladder in future. According to the survey, there is no doubt that the English language is on the first place. (This research was conducted in the International School of Foreign Languages “Denis’s School” in Omsk, Russia.) English is officially considered to be the international language, the language of business and trade. English takes 80%of the business language space. This language is everywhere: when we go travelling, apply for a job, look for information, work at the computer, fill in the application forms and so on. There is no need to say about international companies where English is a corporate language.

Thereby, in the contemporary, extremely fast developing world, the English language is not an opportunity to speak with a foreigner, but a strong necessity.

In the last 5-7 years there seems to be an increase in the demand for workers, knowing German. This tendency is connected with the extension of the quantity of German investors and partners, and the German language, as it is known, is the language of technology and finance.

There are a lot of discussions about the popularity of other foreign languages. Apparently, Chinese and Japanese languages are urgent nowadays. It being known that the majority of people, studying these languages, say that they learn them exactly for their work. More and more Eastern companies open their offices in Russia. Chinese and Japanese languages are considered to be quite difficult languages, and it is an incredibly difficult task to find specialists, speaking these languages at a high level.

We can notice from this analysis that foreign languages dramatically influence different fields of market labour: trade, business, administration, economics, practically every sphere. And one should not see in this the bad impact of this or that language on Russia, on its culture. This influence shows that we are a part of global community and should keep to this progress and help our country to change with the extremely fast developing world.

Literature:

1.  Bruce J.Caldwell Beyond Positivism Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century/J. Caldwell Bruce. – Express Publishing, 2004

2. Douglass C. North Understanding the Process of Economic Change (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)/C. North Douglas. – Faber&Faber, 2008