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How Language Learning Benefits the Pharmaceutical Industry

Anika Wegner
Published: 4th August 2023
Updated: 24th August 2023
Junge Pharmazeutikerin arbeitet in einem Labor.

Are you curious to know how Babbel can benefit companies in the pharmaceutical sector? The industry currently plays a critical role in the global climate, which is why it’s well-suited to a digital learning offering. Find out here how your pharmaceutical team can benefit from language learning.

The pharma sector is a diverse and complex world with a language of its own, one that also many native English speakers would struggle to understand. It’s crucial for employees to be able to rely on scientific terms and technical work processes. It was clear that we needed to create a new language course.

Therefore, our language experts designed a specific blended learning course with a series of lessons tailored to all members of the pharma industry, from administration to research and development to formulation scientists. The lessons guide learners through pharma-specific vocabulary, common phrases, and real-life scenarios. Keep on reading to find out how your pharmaceutical team can benefit from Babbel and our specific language course.

Table of Contents

ebook Babbel Meets Pharma Babbel for Business

How do pharma companies benefit from language learning?

In our eBook “Babbel Meets Pharma,” we will show you which growth opportunities open up for pharma companies through multilingual communication. Download it now for free!

The importance of communication and language learning in the pharmaceutical industry

Communication and language learning are of paramount importance in the pharmaceutical industry due to the complex and sensitive nature of the work involved. Here’s why they are crucial:

  1. Regulatory Compliance: The pharmaceutical industry is heavily regulated, with strict guidelines and requirements. Effective communication is essential for ensuring that all parties involved, from researchers to regulators, understand and adhere to these regulations. Language barriers can lead to misunderstandings and non-compliance.
  2. Clinical Trials and Research: Clear communication is vital during the planning, execution, and reporting of clinical trials. Accurate documentation, informed consent, and effective collaboration among researchers, investigators, and participants require strong language skills to avoid errors and ensure ethical practices.
  3. Global Reach and Market Expansion: Pharmaceutical companies often operate in a global marketplace. Learning languages allows companies to navigate regulatory processes, negotiate contracts, and market products in various countries, increasing market penetration and revenue potential.
  4. Medical Professionals and Patients: Effective communication between pharmaceutical representatives, healthcare professionals, and patients is crucial for the successful adoption of medications and treatments. Clear communication helps in explaining drug benefits, usage instructions, potential side effects, and contraindications accurately.
  5. Supply Chain Management: In a global supply chain, pharmaceutical companies must communicate with suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and logistics partners. Language skills facilitate smoother interactions, reducing the risk of misunderstandings that could lead to supply chain disruptions.
  6. Licensing and Partnerships: Collaborations, licensing agreements, and partnerships are common in the pharmaceutical industry. Effective communication is essential during negotiations, contract drafting, and ongoing collaboration to ensure alignment and success.
  7. Patient Safety and Adverse Events: Accurate reporting of adverse events and potential side effects is critical for patient safety. Language barriers could lead to misinterpretations or inadequate documentation, which may impact patient health and regulatory reporting.
  8. Scientific Publications: Language skills are crucial for publishing research findings in reputable scientific journals. Proper communication ensures that research is disseminated accurately, contributing to the industry’s knowledge base.
  9. Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility: Clear communication is important for conveying a company’s commitment to ethical practices, safety standards, and environmental responsibility. Language learning can enhance messaging related to these values.
  10. Internal Collaboration and Innovation: Effective communication among cross-functional teams fosters innovation and accelerates drug development processes. Language skills facilitate collaboration between scientists, researchers, clinicians, and regulatory experts.
  11. Drug Marketing and Patient Education: In marketing pharmaceutical products and educating patients, clear and culturally sensitive communication is essential. Learning languages helps tailor marketing campaigns and educational materials to specific audiences.

In summary, communication and language learning play a critical role in the pharmaceutical industry by ensuring regulatory compliance, enabling global expansion, supporting clinical research, enhancing patient safety, and facilitating collaboration at various levels. These skills contribute to the industry’s success in developing and delivering safe and effective medical treatments to people around the world.

Pharmaceutical team working in a lab.

How can the pharmaceutical industry benefit from digital language courses?

Learning a second language has a lot of benefits for your company. Pharma companies can expect these positive changes:

Communication optimises your ROI

Many pharma companies hire talent from all around the world according to their education and experience rather than location. This means workforces are international and multilingual, making language learning essential to avoid miscommunication among colleagues and ensure smooth communication, collaboration, and overall productivity in the company.

Moreover, companies in the pharma industry largely work with global companies and clients. Therefore, equipping employees with the right language skills to communicate effectively and confidently is crucial to building relationships, leading negotiations, and securing business opportunities. This makes language courses essential for pharma companies.

Future-proof your team in times of uncertainty

However, the pharma industry is exposed to a variety of financial pressures, resulting in possible budget cuts in all areas of the companies, including employee training. In Europe, 60 to 70 percent of the healthcare system is publicly funded. Therefore, this industry is especially affected by the drive to save costs in government budgets.

Moreover, the sector is experiencing growing innovation costs. At the same time, companies are facing increasing competition from “pharmerging markets,” such as China and India, adding pressure to keep prices for medication low.

Furthermore, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, both the price of active ingredients and the logistical costs of production have risen. Not only that, but German pharmaceutical exports depend on the UK, so the uncertainty of Brexit has also had an impact on cost thresholds.

However, investing in innovation and education remains a top priority, even in times of crisis. Providing employee training opportunities is essential for pharmaceutical companies. On the one hand, companies need to ensure employees have the right skills to compete in a tempestuous climate. This is where language learning comes in. Seamless communication skills will help maintain strong international relations. Especially training the Business English skills of pharmaceutical teams can prevent expensive miscommunications and strengthen negotiation skills.

Attract and retain top talent

On the other hand, development opportunities play an important role in motivating and retaining talent. Offering further education makes employees feel valued, satisfied with their jobs, and more likely to stay with their employer. This in return increases employee performance and efficiency.

Manage resources efficiently

In order for companies to keep providing further education, training solutions need to be cost-effective and enable the training budget to be independent of external factors. This is why innovative learning resources such as Babbel are in high demand. Not only is Babbel more cost-effective than traditional classroom-based training, but it also offers an integrated solution that adapts to the needs of a diverse workforce, offering access to different languages and entry levels.

In an industry as fast-moving and reactive as the pharma sector, finding time for long-term education can be a challenge. Still, pharmaceutical companies assign 46% more time and financial resources to further education than other industries, with learners tending to favor intensive courses rather than casual training. Therefore, courses must be concise and effectively teach new skills in a short period of time. This is where online training with short but effective lessons is easier to fit into busy work schedules than traditional in-person language classes. Digital classes enable learners to practice where and when suits them best, without interfering with work tasks or requiring employees to take time off to learn, therefore providing more flexibility overall.

Improve employee technological literacy

Besides that, all areas of the pharmaceutical sector are becoming more digital. Many pharma companies are turning to digital solutions when it comes to employee training, as integrating digital learning options is essential to keep pace with the changing dynamics of the workplace.

This is where Babbel can help pharma-industry teams transition into digital learning experiences and improve employee technological literacy. Babbel’s online language learning platform is user-friendly and offers a variety of learning opportunities. Thus learners can use the Babbel app combined with video lessons with professional teachers, and profit from our blended learning solution.

Pharma company employees learning languages

Why is Babbel the right fit for pharmaceutical companies?

Over the years, our Babbel for Business team has worked with many pharmaceutical companies, learned from them, and gained valuable insights into the field. Based on this experience, our language experts have created a pharmaceutical course including a variety of lessons that will train your employees to gain exactly the language competencies needed in your field. We discuss our pharmaceutical course in more detail later.

Babbel offers flexible solutions and a variety of languages

Babbel prepares learners for real-life conversations. Besides, the 15-minute lessons fit into busy schedules and can be completed during a lunch break or on the way to or from work.

Babbel subscriptions are cost-efficient and flexible, as seats are easily transferable from one employee to another. Learner progression can be easily tracked with weekly or monthly usage reports and a user-friendly admin portal.

With increasingly international workforces, pharmaceutical companies need a digital offering with multiple languages available. Babbel has 14 learning languages and various display languages to choose from, with multiple levels to start at. 

📢  Have you heard?
In episode 16 of our podcast, we discover how to keep up motivation while learning a new language. Listen here:

Babbel offers blended learning for the best learning success

Depending on the specific goals of each company, Babbel for Business offers different subscriptions:

  • Babbel Professional enables employees to get started via the language-learning platform
  • Babbel Live combines the online lessons on the platform with group video lessons 
  • Babbel Intensive offers 1:1 video lessons with a professional teacher for the fastest learning success

Babbel Live as well as Babbel Intensive follow the blended learning approach in combining online lessons with 1:1 or group video lessons with professional teachers, making language learning even more effective. This will help employees get speaking fast and gain confidence, which is invaluable in an industry that has strong international growth opportunities and is dependent on exports from other nations.

Babbel is a valued corporate benefit

The pharmaceutical industry is home to professionals who are truly top of their game. Offering Babbel as a corporate benefit or as an intensive training opportunity can help retain and motivate talent. And, with an academic workforce, employees are likely to be attuned to further education and will happily reap the benefits of Babbel.

Two business people are discussing a project on a computer.

What to expect from Babbel’s pharmaceutical course

Genevieve Sabin, a communication expert at Babbel, is the chief creator of Babbel’s pharma course. We talked to her about how she designed the course and what you can expect from it.

Lessons specifically designed for the pharmaceutical industry

Sabin created the course with the aim of making it accessible for anyone connected to pharma. “There isn’t just one type of pharmaceutical professional,” Sabin says. “There are so many different facets to the industry, so many departments and roles. That’s why we approached the course from as many perspectives as possible” and designed the course as follows:

  1. Lesson: Pharmaceutical drugs
  2. Lesson: Dosage forms
  3. Lesson: Warning signs in the laboratory
  4. Lesson: Departments and roles
  5. Lesson: Areas of pharmaceutical research

Sabin aimed to create content that would stimulate industry professionals and in so doing learned many lessons herself. “I learned new words, like ‘orphan drug!’ These drugs are designed to treat very rare diseases, and their name comes from there not being a large market for a drug that treats such a rarely occurring disease.”

Prepare your pharmaceutical team for real-life scenarios

Sabin built the lessons holistically, going beyond the traditional vocabulary setup to structure real-life scenarios that hone in on the essence of the word as well as the literal meaning. “The course is technical,” Sabin explains. “For example, we use language about the drugs and dosage form and the composition of the drugs themselves, as well as dialogues between pharmacists doing an inventory together. This makes the courses engaging and effective, as the language is put into real-life scenarios.”

Different learning paths for pharma professionals

Additionally, B2B learners have access to newly developed learning paths with course suggestions, specific to the industry. With these guides, pharma professionals will be able to follow a 4-week path that will help them get started and build valuable learning habits during the first phase of their training.

Depending on the employees’ needs, three different learning paths can be chosen:

  1. Medical and Pharma
  2. Office Work
  3. Negotiation and Management

“The pharmaceutical learning path is tailored to the industry and additionally integrates general business competencies,” says Sabin. “If you choose the learning path for management, for example, we’ll suggest ‘Departments and Roles’ from the pharma course, and then from other courses, we’ll suggest ‘Agenda’, ‘Agreeing and Disagreeing’ and ‘Negotiation’.”

This way, the learning paths guarantee fast progress and ensure the learners learn relevant vocabulary and conversation. Still, learners have access to all of Babbel’s course content and can choose exactly the lessons they want to complete.

With our new pharmaceutical course, we aim to cover the many facets of this complex industry and provide a solid foundation so that all stakeholders can work together effectively in these challenging times.

ebook Babbel Meets Pharma Babbel for Business

How do pharma companies benefit from language learning?

In our eBook “Babbel Meets Pharma,” we will show you which growth opportunities open up for pharma companies through multilingual communication. Download it now for free!

Anika Wegner

Anika Wegner

SEO Content & Blog Manager — Exploring other cultures through language is particularly important to her. That's why she loves writing for Babbel about topics, how companies can benefit from language-learning solutions.

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