What does Calsonic produce from its plant in Llanelli?
Radiators, charge air-coolers, oil coolers

Which languages are most important at Calsonic?
French, German, Spanish and Japanese

In which jobs within Calsonic are languages essential?
Account co-ordinators (overseas clients), Group Legal Advisor, Schedulers and Engineers.

How important are languages at Calsonic?
The ability to speak a foreign language is a real asset when working with foreign customers. It facilitates relationships with suppliers and customers and allows you to be much more ‘hands on’. Many of the overseas customers do not speak English and you may well find yourself conversing in French but with a Spanish customer.

Another benefit to languages is that working with foreign contacts in their mother tongue and on a daily basis, often results in friendship. This not only makes the job more enjoyable from a social perspective, but allows far greater flexibility and negotiation when working together, which is achieved through establishing a good level of trust with your customer.

Do you provide language training? When is training provided?
Language training in French, German, Spanish and Welsh is offered by Calsonic in group lessons held after work. Tutoring on a one-to-one basis is also available but is at the discretion of the management and is tailored to match the requirements of the individual.

What are the benefits of language learning at Calsonic?
The language tuition at Calsonic helps to bridge the gap between university/school vocabulary and that used in business. Work-based language learning is also useful as it provides a good grounding in industry-specific examples and allows you to build a broader, transferable vocabulary, which can be adapted to suit any business/industry environment.

Is it an advantage to recruit staff that already have a grounding in one or more foreign languages?
Recruiting employees with foreign languages is a real bonus for any company as it increases flexibility within the office. In manufacturing it is essential to clarify customer requirements, which are far easier to establish when project members are able to speak to the customer in their mother tongue.

It is not only the company, but also the employee who can benefit from language skills. A bi-lingual employee often has greater exposure to more business functions through translating or interpreting for non-foreign language speaking colleagues. This in turn enriches their function and can often result in their work being more interesting and diversified than that of a non foreign language speaking colleague performing the same role.

To which countries do Calsonic staff travel on a regular basis?
France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Japan

What type of staff travel the most; management, engineers, sales?
Managers and engineers tend do the most travelling. The sales co-ordinators play a supportive role in the office when the business/account managers are off-site. Co-ordinators do get the chance to attend overseas meetings but it usually depends on the nature of the issues to discuss and the level of involvement that the coordinators will have in it.