How do you tell someone they need accent reduction? SHOULD you?

When I meet someone new and describe what I do, they often tell me about someone at work or someone they have to speak to on the phone in another territory (IT departments in India is the most common one) whose accent they can't understand.

But when they relate this anecdote, it turns out they almost never mention their difficulty to the strongly-accented person.

They just muddle through, sometimes pretending they understand, sometimes asking that person to repeat themselves, usually getting terribly embarrassed by the whole thing.

And if they're embarrassed, imagine how the person with the accent is feeling!

Why is it so difficult to broach this subject?

A person's speech is part of who they are and where they come from, so being told this part of them isn't acceptable can often be taken as a major affront.

It may be interpreted as rudeness on your part: at worst, the other person may think you're being racist. Even if you bring it up with the best of intentions, it may not be well-received.

And not everyone who brings up 'the accent' has good intentions. I wrote last time about how 1 in 4 people in Britain has been mocked for their accent at work. Difficulty understanding an accent - whether genuine or feigned - can be used to diminish or undermine an individual. Watch Russell Brand dealing with interviewers on US television back in 2013: at 4'46 and 7'35, the presenters are visibly uncomfortable with Brand's ideas and sharp humour about the presenters themselves, so they fall back on remarks about his accent, as a way to undermine him.

The problem of 'linguistic racism' is not well-documented but it does exist. There isn't a great deal of legal cover for discrimination based on accent either. I wrote on LinkedIn earlier this week about how accent is not a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010.

Telling someone that colleagues can't understand them is particularly tricky when the accent is from a country or region where English is an official language or the accented person's first language. I have had numerous clients from Singapore, India, Pakistan, Nigeria. For them, it's not the case that they are pronouncing their English incorrectly: where they're from, they ARE pronouncing it correctly. It's you who doesn't get it!

Now perhaps they have a point: maybe British executives who work as part of an international team should be sent on accent comprehension courses, to get used to their colleagues' 'foreign'-sounding English! There is a company in the US who offers this service as a way to mitigate accent bias and make all staff members more comfortable.

If your company or department doesn't have the HR budget to send everyone on an accent-comprehension course, what can you do?

So how do you tell someone about accent reduction?

I've spoken to a range of employers and HR professionals about this, and read a great deal on the subject, and no one has a foolproof method for starting this conversation.

Some advocate the direct approach; whereas this blog from US company FluencyCorp has some useful ideas for how to start this conversation more gently.

As with the coaching I do, I think it all depends on the individual and the relationship you have with them.

Sometimes it can be done with an informal chat; often it works when it comes as part of an otherwise glowing appraisal or performance review ('you're doing fantastic work, we're really pleased, the only area we really need to work on is communication skills...').

It's always more effective to talk about how accent reduction classes would benefit the individual, rather than everyone else.

It's not about making life easier for everyone else, it's about making life easier for the accented person: enhancing their skills, their effectiveness, their confidence.

So if there is someone you know, a colleague or a friend, who's frustrated at having to repeat themselves all the time or who hates being asked to speak in meetings, it could be that they would love to get help if others weren't too polite to tell them about it.

As to how you go about suggesting they take lessons, you be the judge: it's your colleague or friend, you know how best to approach them.

And of course, if you're in HR and you're recommending accent reduction training to a member of staff, it always goes down better if the company is offering to pay for it!