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In just one country of the Metro-Atlanta area, the Latino buying power was $1.9 billion in 2003 (Selig Center for Economic Growth, University of Georgia). Local banks are working to get some of that business by hiring Latino and bilingual employees and offering Spanish training to other employees. Other businesses are training their call center employees in basic Spanish to handle Latino customer service calls. What is your industry doing?
Many companies are realizing that they need to use skilled bilingual facilitators to explain company policies, as well as insurance and workers comp procedures. It is important to hire someone who understands both Anglo and the Latino cultures in addition to knowing English and Spanish.
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In a recent issue [see October 2003], Communication Matters had answers for our True-False quiz. The third statement in the quiz was: “Latinos are more likely to live in family households and less likely to live alone than Anglos.” True is the obvious answer, but understanding why may not be so obvious. Many Latinos (males) are sending a lot of money back home and share quarters to save money, but it is also true that Latinos in general are not solitary people and may be living in multi-generational or extended family homes. Latinos are very family oriented!
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Save time and money! Have instructions for tax withholding forms (both State and Federal) and the I9 form (Dept. of Immigration and Naturalization) translated to Spanish to avoid extra work in correcting errors in the English-only forms.
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