Lev Kishakevich, a judge of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court, who was selected as Ukraine’s primary candidate for election as a judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC) following a competitive selection process, does not possess the required proficiency in the ICC’s working languages—French and English—according to an ICC document.
A report by the Advisory Committee on the Nomination of Judges, dated August 5, 2026, and posted on the ICC website, notes in particular that the Rome Statute requires candidates for judgeship to be fluent in the ICC’s working languages, and that the candidate from Ukraine does not speak French and does not possess the required level of English to perform the duties of a judge of the Court.
“The Committee regrets that the candidate’s language skills, as demonstrated during the interview, did not allow the Committee to properly assess his qualifications and suitability for the position in accordance with Article 36 of the Rome Statute,” the document states.
The Committee concluded that “the candidate does not meet the qualification requirements for appointment as a judge of the International Criminal Court.”
According to the ICC’s statement, the overall assessment of the candidate’s readiness for the position of judge was therefore incomplete due to the candidate’s language limitations.
“The Committee determined that the candidate’s language limitations would prevent him from making an immediate contribution to the work of the Court,” the document notes.
The “Interfax-Ukraine” news agency contacted the Supreme Court requesting comment on this situation.
On January 1, 2025, Ukraine officially became the 125th State Party to the Rome Statute of the ICC. Thus, in accordance with the Statute, Ukraine, like every State Party, may nominate one candidate to the ICC.
As reported by the Supreme Court, on April 8, 2026, the selection committee responsible for choosing Ukraine’s candidate for election as an ICC judge—based on the results of interviews with the candidates held on March 24–26—selected Ukraine’s primary candidate for election as an ICC judge. That candidate is Lev Kishakevich, a judge of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court.
Source: https://asp.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/asp_docs/Report%20ACN.05Aug26.1000.pdf
https://asp.icc-cpi.int/sessions/documentation/25th-session#documentation
The candidate has a good command of English; they read documentation daily, correspond with colleagues, and watch professional videos without subtitles. During the interview, they’re asked to briefly introduce themselves, and suddenly their response falls apart: too many details, several long pauses, and awkward transitions between topics.
This doesn’t necessarily mean their language proficiency is too high. An interview tests more than just English. It simultaneously requires recalling relevant experience, choosing the best example, constructing a logical response, monitoring the interviewer’s reaction, and speaking under the pressure of being evaluated.
In a typical work conversation, this combination doesn’t happen very often. That’s exactly why you should prepare for an interview as if it were a distinct professional situation.
Recruiters may phrase questions differently, but the main topics recur. Candidates are asked to explain their experience, identify their strengths, and describe a challenging project, a conflict, a mistake, a poor decision, or a time-sensitive situation.
This is good news. You don’t need to anticipate every possible question. It’s enough to prepare a small repertoire of professional stories that can be adapted to different questions.
For example, one story about launching a project can showcase leadership, risk management, communication with the team, and the ability to act in the face of uncertainty. Another, about a mistake, can demonstrate accountability and how the candidate adapts the process after a setback.
The worst strategy here isn’t a lack of perfect English. It’s much more dangerous to wait until after the recruiter asks the question to come up with the right example.
Behavioral interviews are often built around questions like Tell me about a time when… or Can you give me an example of….
For these answers, it’s helpful to use the STAR framework: Situation, Task, Action, Result. It shouldn’t sound like a memorized formula. Its purpose is simpler: to prevent the candidate from getting lost in the backstory and forgetting how it all ended.
A weak answer often looks like this: the person spends a long time describing the company, the team, the context, and other people’s actions, while squeezing their own decision into a single sentence. The interviewer hears a lot of details but doesn’t understand exactly what the candidate did.
It’s better to structure your response differently:
The phrase We successfully completed the project says almost nothing about the person’s contribution. It’s much more helpful to explain exactly what changed: the timeline was shortened, the number of errors decreased, the client approved the solution, or the team avoided a recurrence of the problem.
Preparation doesn’t mean you have to write twenty answers and memorize them word for word.
A memorized monologue is easy to spot. The candidate speaks too monotonously, and after a follow-up question, they lose their rhythm because the conversation has strayed from the script. In addition, long prepared responses often contain vocabulary that the person doesn’t use naturally.
It’s more practical to prepare an outline:
● the main idea;
● two or three facts;
● relevant professional terms;
● a brief conclusion.
Then the answer sounds slightly different each time, but it doesn’t fall apart. This is closer to a real interview, where the recruiter might interrupt, ask for clarification on a detail, or move on to the next question sooner than the candidate expected.
The question Tell me about yourself seems simple, so it’s often underestimated. People start with college, recount their entire career path, and after a few minutes still haven’t gotten to why they applied for this particular position.
The interviewer usually doesn’t need your entire life story—they need the professional context. A good answer takes about one or two minutes and ties together three things:
● what you do now;
● which experience is most relevant to the role;
● why taking the next step here makes sense.
For example, instead of listing every job you’ve ever had, focus on the last few years, the types of projects you’ve worked on, and the responsibilities you’d like to expand.
This helps the recruiter quickly form a comprehensive picture of the candidate. It also reduces the risk that your key points will get lost somewhere between your first internship and a position that’s long since become irrelevant.
During an interview, your active vocabulary often shrinks. You know the right word but can’t recall it at the right moment. You start constructing overly long sentences, lose your train of thought, or correct yourself several times.
This is a normal reaction to stress. Trying to combat it solely by reviewing grammar isn’t very effective.
What helps are practice sessions that simulate real-life pace and unpredictability. Don’t just read your answers aloud; ask your conversation partner to ask follow-up questions, change the order of the questions, and interrupt you from time to time.
It’s also helpful to practice phrases that buy you a few seconds to think:
That’s a good question. Let me think of the most relevant example.
There are two parts to my answer.
The main challenge was…
This isn’t a way to mask poor English. Such phrases help you structure your response and avoid filling the pause with random words.
Candidates often try to come up with a “safe” weakness that actually sounds like a strength: taking on too much responsibility, perfectionism, or setting the bar too high for themselves.
Recruiters have heard these answers hundreds of times. A real—but manageable—shortcoming is more valuable: the situation in which it manifested, and a specific change in behavior.
A similar principle applies to mistakes. There’s no need to choose a catastrophe that calls your professional competence into question.
But the answer I can’t think of any major mistakes isn’t convincing either. It tends to show a reluctance to analyze one’s own work.
A strong answer doesn’t justify the mistake or shift the blame onto the team. It explains what the candidate did after it happened.
Even people who answer professional questions well can get flustered when discussing compensation. Here, you have to be polite, specific, and avoid agreeing too quickly—all at the same time.
It’s worth preparing in advance how to frame your expected salary, clarify the compensation structure, and request time to consider the offer.
For example:
Based on the scope of the role and my experience, I’m considering a range of…
Could you tell me more about the bonus structure and the review cycle?
Thank you for the offer. Could I have two days to review the details?
A person may know all these words individually, but without practice, it’s much harder to say them calmly. Money, as it turns out, adds grammatical tension to the conversation without any permission from the CEFR.
Effective preparation for an interview in English isn’t just about memorizing a list of correct phrases. You need to come up with your own examples, learn to maintain a clear structure, and practice the conversation several times in conditions similar to a real interview.
Before the interview, it’s helpful to check:
● whether you can briefly explain your professional background;
● whether you have a few stories involving results, challenges, conflicts, and mistakes;
● whether you clearly articulate your own contributions;
● whether you’re prepared for follow-up questions;
● whether you can discuss salary and ask the employer your own questions.
A strong interview doesn’t require a flawless accent or complex sentence structures in every sentence. It’s more important for the interviewer to quickly understand your experience, decision-making logic, and suitability for the role.
Therefore, you shouldn’t practice “English in general,” but rather your own professional history. That’s exactly what you’ll need to convey convincingly when someone who knows nothing about you yet appears on the screen.
The question “How long does it take to improve my English for work?” almost always sounds as if there’s a single correct answer out there. Three months, half a year, a year. All you have to do is name a timeframe, and the plan is ready.
In reality, you’ll first have to answer a less convenient question: what exactly does “for work” mean in your case?
An accountant who reads emails from headquarters needs one set of skills. A sales manager who negotiates with new clients needs another. A developer might be able to confidently read documentation at the B1 level but get lost during a short stand-up meeting. A manager with a formal B2 level can deliver a prepared presentation just fine but may struggle to engage in discussions afterward.
That’s why a working level isn’t defined by a fancy letter on a certificate, but by what a person can actually do in English without constant assistance.
It’s no coincidence that B2 is often used as a benchmark for international work. According to the CEFR description, a person at this level understands the main ideas of complex texts, can discuss topics within their field of expertise, explain their views, and communicate with sufficient spontaneity.
This is a good general benchmark, but not a universal pass to any professional situation.
For work involving predictable writing tasks, a strong B1 level is sometimes sufficient. For negotiations, public speaking, legally sensitive conversations, or managing an international team, you may need B2+ or C1. Furthermore, a general proficiency level does not indicate how well a person masters the language specific to their profession.
Therefore, the goal of “achieving B2” is useful only when accompanied by a list of specific actions. For example: participating in meetings, explaining delays, writing to clients, conducting demos, and answering questions without a prepared script.
Cambridge English provides a rough guideline: moving from one CEFR level to the next often requires about 200 hours of guided learning. This is not a law of nature, nor is it a guarantee. The pace depends on your starting level, prior experience, intensity, regularity, age, the quality of your practice, and your exposure to the language outside of class.
It’s especially important to understand the word “hours” correctly.
This guideline applies to lessons and guided study. It does not mean 200 hours of passively watching videos. Independent practice outside of class—reading, listening, writing, and using the language in real-life situations—also affects progress, but Cambridge considers these as contributing factors rather than a guaranteed component of each of those 200 hours. If a person attends class twice a week but hardly uses English between sessions, the journey will take longer.
Even the math here is a bit tricky.
Two hours of classes per week add up to about 100 hours per year, not counting vacations and absences. Additional regular practice can significantly speed up progress. On the other hand, long breaks force you to spend part of your time revisiting material you were once familiar with.
For someone with a solid B1 level who needs a general B2, it’s often worth planning not just a few weeks, but many months of consistent work. If the starting point is A2, the path is longer, since you’ll need to complete at least two major stages.
But there’s an important caveat here. You can reach a functional proficiency level sooner than you can achieve full proficiency across all skills.
Let’s say a professional has a B1 level and needs to start participating in weekly meetings within two months. It’s unlikely they’ll be able to fully transition to B2 within that timeframe. However, they can practice the structure of a short report, clarifications, follow-up questions, explaining roadblocks, and summarizing agreements. The person hasn’t yet mastered the entire next level, but is already better at performing specific work tasks.
This isn’t a workaround. It’s simply that overall proficiency and readiness for a specific scenario measure different things.
A company decides to “bring the department up to B2 in six months” and forms a single group. After testing, it turns out that some employees are at A2, some at B1, and two are already performing at nearly B2. Everyone receives the same schedule and program, even though their distance from the goal varies.
After a few months, the stronger employees get bored, the weaker ones progress too quickly, and management sees the uneven results and concludes that the training is ineffective.
The problem arose even before the first session. The deadline was set before the starting level and job requirements were determined.
A proper plan starts with an assessment. Then employees are grouped by similar skill levels, the tasks for each role are clarified, and only then is the schedule drawn up. Sometimes a company truly needs B2 for everyone. More often, however, the sales department needs negotiation skills, the technical team needs precise explanations, and managers need to work on handling objections and giving presentations.
Consistency is almost always more important than rare bursts of motivation. Three hours every two weeks looks impressive on the calendar, but has a weaker effect than shorter practice sessions several times a week.
A clear connection to real life also helps. When someone practices a phrase today and uses it in a meeting tomorrow, the material sticks better than a topic that might be useful at some unspecified point in the future.
Most often, time is wasted due to three things: an irregular schedule, studying without a clear goal, and attempting to complete a program that doesn’t match your current level.
Before counting the months, it’s worth figuring out your English levels, determining your starting point, and describing the situations for which you need the language.
After that, your forecast becomes much more realistic. Not “fluent English in three months,” but, for example, “in three months, learn to handle a brief professional call, and over the course of a year, systematically progress from B1 to B2.”
Such a plan sounds more modest than an advertising promise. But you can actually stick to it, rather than just getting carried away on the day you pay.
My resume says I’m at the B2 level. I passed the test. I can read letters in English without much trouble, technical documentation makes sense to me, and written screening doesn’t intimidate me. But then the first call with a client begins, and everything changes: the person speaks more briefly than planned, misses the right moment to respond, or agrees when they wanted to clarify or object.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that their English level is overestimated. More often than not, a B2 rating simply doesn’t capture the full picture of a person’s language profile.
The CEFR describes proficiency not by a single skill, but by a whole set of skills: reading, listening, writing, speaking, and interacting with others. These skills may be developed unevenly. A person may be able to confidently read professional texts and write letters, but react more slowly in a live conversation.
At the same time, B2 should not be considered a purely academic or “textbook” level. It involves participating in discussions, presenting arguments, clarifying points, giving presentations, and engaging in spontaneous interaction. The problem lies elsewhere: a notation on a resume does not show how well these skills have been internalized and honed specifically in real-world work situations.
At work, English almost never appears in the sterile conditions of a test. It comes in the form of a brief report during a meeting, a product demonstration, a discussion of deadlines, a complex question from a client, or the need to politely disagree.
For example, the phrase “We may need to revisit the timeline” can be taken literally. But during a real conversation, you also need to recognize the other person’s intent, quickly clarify their position, and suggest the next step. You only have a few seconds to do all of this.
The pace of the conversation presents a separate challenge. In writing, you can choose your words carefully, review your sentences, and rephrase anything that sounds too harsh. On a call, there’s no such pause. This is especially true when several people are involved in the conversation; participants may interrupt one another, speak at different speeds, or have unusual accents.
As a result, a professional may fully understand the content of the conversation and have a strong professional stance, but still be unable to join the discussion in time. From the outside, this sometimes appears as a lack of confidence or passivity, although the real reason lies in a lack of practice in verbal communication.
There is another level of complexity: workplace communication consists of more than just words and grammar. You need to understand how directly you can disagree, how to soften a refusal, when it’s appropriate to interrupt a conversation partner, and how to verify that everyone has understood the decision in the same way.
That is precisely why a business English course should be built not around lists of professional terms, but around real-life scenarios: calls with clients, presentations, discussions of deadlines, objections, negotiations, and difficult news that must be conveyed correctly.
It’s helpful to practice not only giving the correct answer but also your reaction speed.
Can a person ask for clarification without losing their confident tone? Can they politely disagree? Are they able to join a conversation with several participants? Can they briefly summarize the decision and next steps at the end?
For a professional, the difference is entirely practical. A B2 level on a resume can help you pass the initial screening. A B2 level that translates to real-world performance during a call allows you to fully participate in decision-making, communicate with clients, and take on more complex professional roles.
The gap between these two levels is bridged not by a new entry on your resume, but by practice in the right situations—where English ceases to be a subject and becomes a working tool.
The question “What level of English do you need to work abroad?” sounds very simple. It’s as if you could just open a chart, find your profession, see B1, B2 or C1 listed next to it, and calmly pack your suitcase. But in real life, things are a bit more complicated. And, fortunately, it’s not as scary as it sometimes seems.
For most professionals planning to work abroad or in an international environment, the main benchmark is level B2 on the CEFR scale. This is the point where English stops being just a school subject and becomes a working tool. You can hold a conversation, explain your point of view, ask clarifying questions, write a letter, understand colleagues during a meeting, and not get stuck every time someone speaks faster than the narrator in a language learning audio recording.
But it’s important not to overstate things. B2 doesn’t mean “I speak like a native speaker.” It doesn’t necessarily mean perfect pronunciation, flawless grammar, or a vocabulary for every situation, including the subtleties of British irony. B2 is functional independence. You can carry out your tasks in English without needing a constant translator in your head or by your side.
B Level B1B shouldn’t be overlooked either. With this level, you can work in many roles, especially if communication isn’t the central part of the job. For example, if the tasks are more technical, routine, or tied to clear instructions. But B1 often creates a ceiling. It’s as if the person can do the job, but they struggle more in interviews, adapt more slowly, avoid complex conversations, and can’t always demonstrate their true professional level. They have the knowledge and the experience, but English stands in the doorway like a bouncer at a club: “You’re not getting in today.”
C1 isn’t necessary for everyone. This level is for those for whom the language is one of their primary work tools. Management, sales, consulting, HR, teaching, negotiations, public speaking, and working with highly complex documentation. These are situations where you need to do more than just “get your point across”—you need to influence, persuade, defuse conflicts, give presentations, lead complex discussions, and quickly respond to nuances.
One of the most common mistakes people make before relocating is confusing English for job interviews with English for work. These are two different worlds, even though they’re right next to each other.
An interview is a genre all its own. You need to be able to talk about yourself, explain your experience, describe your strengths, answer awkward questions, stay composed under stress, and not start a sentence with “How do you say…” five times in a row. You can prepare for an interview fairly quickly if you already have a basic level of English. You can work through typical questions, learn vocabulary specific to your field, rehearse your answers, and gather a few compelling stories about your experience.
But then the day-to-day work begins. And that’s when English reveals its true nature.
At work, you need to understand colleagues with different accents. One speaks quickly, another swallows half his words, a third uses slang, and a fourth writes messages as if he’s saving letters for his grandchildren. You need to read internal documents, participate in meetings, respond to changes, negotiate deadlines, clarify tasks, and sometimes say “I disagree” in a way that sounds professional rather than like a diplomatic blunder.
That’s exactly why many people experience a strange contrast after moving: they passed the interview, got the job, but the first few months are still difficult. Not because their language level is “bad.” But because they didn’t prepare for those specific situations. They prepared for getting in, but not for life on the inside.
Another pitfall is self-assessment. This is especially true for those who have been reading in English for a long time, watching videos and TV shows, or listening to podcasts. Passive comprehension often develops faster than active speaking. A person might understand an article perfectly but get flustered when they have to explain their point of view in 20 seconds during a phone call. At that moment, the brain behaves like an old computer with 47 tabs open: everything seems to be there, but nothing loads in time.
That’s why, before relocating, it’s helpful not just to think, “I’m roughly at the Intermediate level,” but to honestly assess your level according to the CEFR. And it’s best to assess not only grammar but also speaking, listening, writing, and real-world scenarios. After all, someone might know the tenses but be unable to confidently handle a short phone call. Or they might speak well on everyday topics but struggle with professional vocabulary.
Your English level depends on both the country and the industry. In some companies, English will be the primary language of communication. In others, it’s needed only for documentation, correspondence, or contact with international clients. In large cities and international teams, the requirements are usually higher. In local companies, a lower level is sometimes sufficient, but English quickly becomes important for career growth anyway.
For IT, finance, marketing, logistics, medicine, education, service, or management, the requirements also vary. For example, a developer sometimes only needs to confidently understand tasks, write short messages, and participate in daily stand-ups. A project manager, on the other hand, needs the language for negotiations, conflict resolution, presentations, reports, and explaining complex decisions. Formally, both might have a B2 level, but the substance of that B2 will differ.
This is where the most important part begins: you need to prepare not for “English in general,” but for English tailored to a specific role. If you plan to work in customer service, you need to practice real-life conversations, handling complaints, clarifying details, and using polite phrasing. If you’re heading into IT, you’ll need to handle meetings, technical discussions, status updates, correspondence, and interviews. If your goal is a managerial position, the focus should be on argumentation, presentations, negotiations, and precise phrasing.
Business Language systematically structures this training: first, your actual level is assessed; then your goal is defined; and finally, the program is tailored to the situations you’ll actually encounter after relocating or working internationally. It’s not an abstract “conversational course” where today’s topic is food, tomorrow’s is the weather, and the day after tomorrow’s is happy raccoons in Canada. It’s practical preparation for specific work scenarios.
The ideal level of English for working abroad isn’t the one that looks good on a resume. The ideal level is the one that allows you to do your job, build relationships with colleagues, pass interviews, not remain silent in meetings, and not miss out on opportunities just because of a language barrier.
To get started, B1+ is enough for many people, provided the role doesn’t require complex communication. For stable employment and career growth, the best benchmark is B2. For leadership, client-facing, and public-facing roles, you should aim for C1.
The key is not to wait for the moment when your English becomes “perfect.” That moment often never comes, even for very strong students. It’s better to honestly define your goal, understand the gap between your current level and the one you need, and then practice the specific skills that will yield the best results.
Because relocating and working abroad isn’t a language exam taken just to get a good grade. It’s real life, where English isn’t meant to gather dust on a shelf but to get the job done. Like a good tool: when you need it most.
When a company calculates personnel costs, English rarely appears in the budget as a separate line item. Salaries, taxes, recruiting, technology, CRM, office space, marketing, legal support—all of these are visible in the financial statements. But poor English skills often fall into a different category. They aren’t always considered an expense because they don’t show up as a separate bill at the end of the month.
However, the business still pays for them.
It pays in the form of longer negotiations, unnecessary clarifications, slower client onboarding, missed opportunities, and a team’s diminished confidence during international meetings. It pays by having a skilled specialist remain silent during a call, even though they could have strengthened the company’s position. It pays by having a manager fail to ask an important clarifying question because they’re afraid to phrase it in English.
At first glance, these seem like minor issues. In practice, it’s precisely these small details that make up the true cost of the language barrier.
Poor English within a team rarely seems like a disaster. Usually, everything works: emails are sent, calls are made, documents are translated, and tasks move forward. But they move more slowly, with greater difficulty, and with more friction.
The team’s problem isn’t writing an email; it’s understanding the context, responding appropriately, and not misinterpreting the meaning. A manager might end up handling all calls with foreign partners because other employees “aren’t ready yet.” A manager might avoid face-to-face communication and hide behind email, even though the issue could have been resolved long ago with a brief conversation.
This is how hidden operational costs arise. They aren’t always visible to the CFO, but they’re keenly felt by team leaders, HR, sales, account managers, project managers, and business owners.
Because poor English doesn’t just make it hard to speak. It changes people’s behavior.
People choose simpler tasks. They avoid complex conversations. They delegate tasks they could do themselves. They refuse to participate in international projects. They show less initiative. And gradually, the company begins to operate below its potential.
The most obvious risk of poor English for business: sales and negotiations.
Imagine a manager who knows the product well, understands the client’s needs, and can explain the benefits of a solution in Ukrainian, but who suddenly loses confidence during an English-language call. They start speaking in shorter sentences, avoid complex arguments, ask fewer questions, and agree when they should be clarifying the terms.
From the outside, this may not look like a language problem, but rather a weak negotiating position.
A foreign client doesn’t always realize that they’re dealing with a strong specialist who simply lacks practice in English. They see uncertainty, pauses, vague phrasing, and caution. In international business, this is easily interpreted as insufficient preparation or a lower level of expertise.
This is particularly costly in B2B sales, where decisions aren’t made after just one conversation. What matters there isn’t just the presentation, but also dozens of subtle moments: responding quickly to objections, explaining a technical detail, clarifying expectations, effectively justifying the price, and agreeing on the next step.
If the team cannot confidently conduct these conversations in English, the company loses more than just a single deal. It loses access to a portion of the market.
English doesn’t just affect sales. It directly impacts the speed of work.
An international client sends a technical specification. The team reads it, but some of the wording needs to be checked. Someone translates it. Someone clarifies it. Someone is afraid of misunderstanding and asks a colleague to look at it again. Then a call comes in that could quickly resolve the issue, but the team prepares for it as if it were an exam.
As a result, a simple task drags on.
The delay may be minor: an hour here, half a day there, another day for clarifications. But in business, speed is often a competitive advantage. Whoever responds faster appears more reliable. Whoever finalizes the requirements faster gets to work sooner. Whoever conducts a demo faster is closer to securing the contract.
Poor English creates communication bottlenecks. Not dramatic ones, but constant ones. Like fine sand in a machine: the car seems to be moving, but the engine is working harder.
In many companies, there is an informal role: the person who “knows English well”. Tasks that aren’t part of their job description are brought to them.
In the short term, this is convenient. In the long term, it creates a bottleneck.
One person becomes the in-house negotiator and safety net for the entire team. Their time is spent not on strategic tasks, but on providing language support for processes. If they’re on vacation, sick, or overloaded, part of the communication slows down.
The company seems to have English, but not as a systemic skill of the team, rather as a resource of just a few people. This is risky—especially for businesses that work with international clients, partners, contractors, or investors.
There are specialists who excel in their professional field but cannot advance to the next level because of their English. They do not give presentations to foreign clients, speak at international events, participate in complex negotiations, or lead teams on global projects.
Sometimes a business loses not the person, but the opportunity to fully utilize their potential.
A top-notch engineer may be unable to explain an architectural solution to a client. An experienced financier may avoid English-language meetings with investors. A department head may have to rely on translation in situations that require a quick managerial response.
As a result, the company either promotes less competent but more linguistically confident people, or confines strong specialists to internal tasks. Both options come at a cost.
English doesn’t automatically make someone a professional. But without English, it’s often harder for a professional to gain visibility on the international stage.
Language influences how a company is perceived externally.
A foreign partner may not know the inner workings of the business, may not see the team’s capabilities in detail, and may not understand all the processes. But they do see the communication: emails, phone calls, presentations, responses to questions, and behavior during meetings.
If communication in English is unclear, slow, or overly cautious, it can undermine the perception of professionalism—even when the product is strong, the service is high-quality, and the team is experienced.
Reputation isn’t built solely on major successes. It’s built on small signals: how quickly you responded, How clearly you explained things. Whether you were able to make small talk. Whether you conducted the meeting with confidence. Whether you were caught off guard by an unexpected question.
In international communication, English often serves as a facade for expertise. If that facade cracks, the client may never get around to evaluating the foundation.
When a company finally decides to invest in English training, the first impulse is often simple: “Let’s set up a course for everyone.”
On paper, this seems logical. There’s a group of employees, a teacher, and classes twice a week. But in reality, this approach often yields poor results.
The reason is simple: different people have different skill levels, roles, and tasks.
A Sales manager needs to negotiate, handle objections, present value, and follow up after meetings. A Project manager needs to conduct status calls, clarify deadlines, discuss risks, and use phrases to diplomatically resolve complex issues. A technical specialist needs documentation, demos, explanations of solutions, and participation in calls with the client’s team. A manager needs presentations, strategic discussions, reporting, persuasive arguments, and management vocabulary.
If you put everyone in the same program, some will get bored, some won’t keep up, and others won’t see the connection to their work. Motivation drops, attendance slumps, HR gets the nice-sounding fact that “the course took place,” but the business doesn’t see any tangible change.
English for the company should not be abstract learning, but a working tool.
Effective training doesn’t start with a textbook, but with an assessment.
You need to understand employees’ current proficiency levels, the situations where English is most frequently needed, where exactly the barriers lie, and which roles are critical for international communication. One team might need to improve their live calls. Another might need to focus on written communication. A third team needs to work on presentations. A fourth needs industry-specific vocabulary and confidence in spontaneous conversation.
After that, people should be grouped not simply “into one corporate group,” but according to their proficiency levels and goals. This makes training more targeted. Participants don’t waste time on things they don’t need and see the benefits in their work more quickly.
This is precisely the principle on which corporate English training should be based: level assessment, groups tailored to specific tasks, a curriculum designed for real-world work situations, regular progress monitoring, and clear reporting for HR or management.
Then English ceases to be just a “box-ticking course.” It becomes part of the business infrastructure.
You shouldn’t measure the return on investment for English training solely through direct financial metrics. Part of the impact is visible in the team’s behavior.
Employees start speaking more actively during calls. They rely less on a single “English-speaking” colleague. They respond to clients more quickly. They conduct demos with greater confidence. They articulate their thoughts more clearly in emails. They no longer avoid meetings where they used to remain silent.
For a business, this is already a result.
Of course, it’s ideal when these changes can be linked to specific metrics: response time to clients, the number of meetings conducted independently, the quality of follow-ups, increased participation by employees in international projects, and reduced workload for managers who previously served as a language “safety net.”
But the key indicator is simple: the team is beginning to use English not as a school subject, but as a work tool.
Poor English costs a business more than it seems. It doesn’t always cause immediate pain, doesn’t always have an obvious cost, and doesn’t always appear to be a top priority. But it affects sales, speed, reputation, talent development, and the company’s ability to operate on an international level.
A company with strong team English has more freedom. It can enter new markets faster, negotiate with greater confidence, attract foreign clients, present itself without intermediaries, and develop talent within the business.
English is not just a nice-to-have bonus on a resume. For a modern company, it is just as much a part of the infrastructure as CRM, financial accounting, or a project management system. Its value becomes especially apparent when the business stops missing out on opportunities due to the language barrier.
Sometimes the greatest cost to a company isn’t what it pays for training. The greatest cost is what it pays for years of not having it.
