Tips on Holding Inclusive Bilingual Meetings To ensure your employees can fully participate to your meetings, have you thought of the following? As a supervisor or manager, we encourage you to build a work environment that is dynamic and respectful of diversity, which includes enabling employees to work in the official language of their choice. In designated bilingual regions, both Francophone and Anglophone employees have the right to participate in meetings using either of Canada’s two official languages. During the meetings, ensure that the discussions take place in both official languages at the choice of the participants. This is especially important in interregional teams, and in teams that have a mix of unilingual and bilingual employees. These tips will help make your employees feel comfortable using either of Canada’s official languages (OL) at meetings and allow them to fully comprehend the meeting’s content and meaning. Before the Meeting Participants ☑ Think about who will be attending your meeting: • Will the meeting take place across Canada or in bilingual regions? • Do you know if the participants will all be bilingual or if there could be unilingual participants as well? • Do you know the OL preference of the participants? • Do you expect a large number of participants or a small number of participants? ☑ Based on these considerations, there are different options to hold a bilingual meeting: • Bilingual session: Conduct the meeting in both English and French. To ensure that unilingual participants may fully understand and participate, you should recap all the main points in the other OL throughout the meeting. If you are not comfortable in your second OL, you can ask a co-chair to help you with translating into the other OL. With this option, it is recommended to book a longer meeting duration to account for the time it takes to recap in the other OL.
14
My Official Languages Booklet
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker