Language harmonisation to achieve global consistency

Context

Starting out as a Franco-German venture in 1955, Hager Group has grown into a leading global supplier of solutions and services for electrical installations in residential, commercial and industrial buildings. Today, with 7 master brands and a total of over 11,500 employees, Hager Group has 24 production facility locations around the globe and customers in more than 120 countries.

Being a relationship brand, Hager Group understands the importance of true connections with their stakeholders and customers all over the world. In terms of comms, this means striking a balance between respecting local nuances and maintaining their recognisable global brand identity – both internally and externally.

Challenge

Due to its bi-cultural heritage, Hager Group communicates in not just one, but in three core languages: English, French and German. Even though the perspectives of different departments and backgrounds involved in the co-creation of products and solutions enrich the Hager brand, jargon and other internal language can be challenging when communicating with colleagues or customers.

The main challenge at hand was to find a way to help speakers of different mother tongues across different disciplines speak the same ‘Hager language’. To this end, Hager Group asked Creative Culture to compile a multilingual and multidisciplinary glossary.

Solution

Thanks to the industry expertise of our native writers, we were able to compile a multilingual glossary that was both accurate as well as practical for all potential users.

As a starting point, we designed a framework with term category filters, definitions and context descriptions. This way, there could be no confusion about the meaning of terms across departments or languages. As a second step, our teams of dedicated Hager Group linguists – industry experts with a strong background in (corporate) communications – compiled a list of key terms found in our work for the company to date. As a final step, we harmonised the group’s existing terminology data, taking out any inconsistencies or elements of confusion.

Results

The glossary will serve as reference tool within the group, ensuring all communications remain globally consistent while ensuring local compliance.