There is, however, an important distinction between being thrown in and learning on the job. After all, most of us learn best by doing. With Sandberg’s structured guidelines and buddy system, we make it through our first newbie weeks stronger, wiser, infinitely more caffeinated ­and, most importantly, ready to take responsibility for the important work we do.

Hitting the ground runningĚý?

At Sandberg, we believe that by training and supporting our new starters, we’re setting them up to be the best they can be – for us and for our clients. A full week (!) is set aside for induction and training. New starters are introduced to the translation industry as a whole and Sandberg’s position in it, as well as our vision and company values.ĚýThey’re acquainted with their role and their team, their accounts and their clients. It’s a chance to get familiar with the computer-aided translation (CAT) tools they might be working with, explore the oddly named internal systems (Wookie?) and, not least, have a crack at learning their new colleagues’ names from the get-go.Ěý

Ivan Gechev, a Project Manager at our Varna office in Bulgaria, was a complete newcomer to project management and the translation industry when he started at Sandberg in 2019. The induction week helped him wrap his head around not only his own role, but also where he fitted within the structure of his team and where his team fitted withinĚýtheĚýcompany.Ěý

He says: “I remember being amazed by just how detailed and hands-on the training sessions were. For example, the session with Anu [our Managing Director] was key to introducing me to the informal and personal nature of our company culture.” An introduction to project management with team leader Mihaela Ikonomova prepared him for what his actual working day would look like. “Every single training session,” he says, “provided valuable information, whether on ISO standards, a variety of CAT tools or, for example, the intricacies of translator selection.”

Your buddy’s got your backĚý?

After the induction week, training continues in-team. “Buddies” and experienced colleagues are on hand to offer advice and guidance, and crucially, feedback. WhenĚýyou’re ready to deal with most aspects of your role independently, it can be nice to take a moment to bask in the sweet glory of mastering something new.Ěý

Yet in a fast-moving industry, the ability to be flexible and adapt quickly is key. That’s why we continue to train our employees and encourage them to learn more about special areas they might be particularly interested in, whether it be learning about search engine optimisation (SEO), improving their Icelandic or diving into one of the guidelines, for example on translation quality, fromĚý, a language data network.

The name of the gameĚý?

Another term for this is Continuing Professional Development (CPD). Required by translation service standards that Sandberg complies with such as ISO 17100, CPDĚýboils down to life-long learning. Maintaining or acquiring knowledge and skills, and developing personal qualities that aid your work, means that you’re engaging in CPD. What sets it apart from more formalised training is that it’s self-driven and systematically documented.

Acquiring and documenting our skills through CPD is good for several reasons. Not only is it an opportunity for our employees to keep learning and be challenged, they also become more agile and can help with other types of work not directly linked to their own role when there is a business need. But ultimately, we believe that well-trained and confident professionals are best equipped to provide the localisation solutions our clients are looking for.

Learning never stopsĚýĚý

Many a Sandberg heart has skipped a beat upon first receiving their Learning Units (LUs), the core of Sandberg’s training structure and basis for CPD.ĚýIt’s a bit of a wedge, to say the least. If you thought that promotion might be more easily within reach by schmoozing down the pub with your manager, you might want to think again. Our company culture reflects our Nordic values: consultative management, a focus on teamwork, transparency and equal opportunities. This means sharing knowledge, giving feedback, embracing technology and training continuously.

The LUs cover several topics such as project management, linguistic competencies, client/supplier relationships and teamwork. These topics are divided into sub-sections detailing various skills. Completing a skill is done by documenting, either through team leader observations, case studies or written summaries, how you have come to learn the skill and how you have applied it in your daily work.

Laura Karkimo, who just started her seventh year in the company, has been using the LUs to document her professional development while working towards becoming a Senior Finnish Account Linguist. Had the LUs been a physical document, hers would probably be pretty tattered by now. “Having trained and been a ‘buddy’ to several team members over the years,” Laura says, “I can see how the learning units give structure to training. They’re vetted, formalised and objective, ensuring consistent and fair learning opportunities across the company.”

However, even after so many years, Laura finds that there’s no shortage of new things to learn or, indeed, relearn. She says: “Continuously updated LUs, for example information on feature announcements in CAT tools, help to ensure that I do my work in a way that is the most optimal now, not in the way that was the most optimal, say, four years ago.”

Training – what (or who) is it good for?Ěý?

The short answer: absolutely everyone. Setting our starters up with an induction week and buddy system isn’t just out of theĚýgoodnessĚýof our hearts. Neither is our focus on CPD, or why we encourage our employees to keep working on their LUs. Quality translations are at the forefront of everything we do at Sandberg.Ěý

We believe that trained professionals are better at understanding what clients want and setting out with a clear idea of how to achieve that. They will, for example, know what and why reference materials are necessary and how to make the best use of them. They can effectively apply and navigate tools that aid our translations, such as glossaries, translation memories (TMs) and, if the client wants, machine translation (MT).Ěý

Investing in our employees is a way of investing in our clients – only the best results will keep our clients coming back to us.

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There are many parallels to our COVID-19 world: in the Wonderland, walking away from something brought you towards it. In our world, we keep those we love at a distance as a sign of caring. For Alice, running helped her remain stationary. For businesses, even the most vigorous running may this year result in merely staying stationary (and many would in fact be grateful for that). And the government decision-making on coronavirus containment, e.g. the rules of the current UK , has at times been reminiscent of the incomprehensible mind puzzles of the Red and White Queens of the Wonderland.

If we have indeed stepped through the looking glass into a new story, what’s the plot going to be like from here on? No one seems interested in dwelling on what has been. As businesses, we are encouraged to author the story of what happens next. But the challenge in real-life storytelling is that, in order to be useful, our stories need to be true. And, by definition, true stories will always be about what has been.

This means that before sketching the next chapter, each of us might benefit from a little reflection. You may think that humans automatically learn from experience, but that’s not true. We only learn if we reflect on our experiences. Ergo, instead of peering through the looking glass, I decided to have a little peek into it. I am not in a position to see what the mirror might reflect back to you, but here are a few things it reflects back to me.

There’s now

I believe that pride in who we are defines our present and our future. Consequently, I set it as my goal to be able to look back with pride on how we at Sandberg responded to the COVID-19 challenge. Three months down the line, I am viewing the European lockdown months as a period when we continued to trade professionally and treat our colleagues, clients and suppliers with exactly the same dignity as before. I am pleased with that.

There were also days when I got too emotionally attached to the performance of the company. I felt I was only a good leader when everything was going well. Those days taught me that my mood as a leader casts a longer shadow than I think. I must learn not to disconnect from the team when I feel low and not to change things erratically for them when I feel impelled to action.

In March 2020, I told my colleagues that I know I ask them every day to trust my ability to steer the company. Furthermore, I ask them to trust that I’m doing it with integrity and benevolence. In order to nurture that trust, I started a corona vlog for the (by then 100% remote-working) Sandberg staff where I talked to them weekly about what was happening in the world, how the company was doing and what I was basing my decisions on. Here are a few clips from those videos.

Then there’s next

With the easing of lockdown measures, we are entering aĚýperiod of unpredictable and possibly muted economic recovery that gives rise to new threats and opportunities. But I have every bit of faith in Sandberg’s future. That is why you see us going ahead with our in-house recruitment plans and why we’ve had five interns join us for the summer. The next group of new colleagues starts in July.

Then we face the question of how to bring people out of isolation and back into our offices. We’ve started by asking whether we even want to bring people back to the office and what the purpose of the office is for a company that can clearly operate without one. We have always maintained we need offices for training and supporting new staff. But having to maintain a metre-plus human distance on the premises would negate many of the reasons why we prefer onsite support to virtual support.

Cabin fever is of course a terrible thing and for many of us having even one colleague in the same room is better for our mental health than working totally alone from home. Some colleagues are restricted in what kind of a home office setup they can have, and going to the office – even if it was them alone in there – would be a better option than working from their bedroom or kitchen table.

There’s no normal

The image at the beginning of this article referring to life in lockdown as being in prison may seem in poor taste. The only allusion I want to make is to the feeling of not being in control and to having limited decision-making power concerning the future.

The notion of ‘normality’ is built on the assumption of steadiness. Without steadiness, there is no normal and the only thing we can rely on is our agility to adapt. With that in mind, we’d be wise to invest in planning for what we should do differently if there was a second wave of COVID-19 with further lockdowns in the next 12 months. We should only learn the hard lessons once.

Earlier this summer, I was discussing furloughing staff with a colleague. He noted that although I seemed to be concerned about the circumstances of individuals, I would obviously invariably put the company’s interests first. That is true, I would. It is my duty, as a director (for corporate governance) and as the head of the management team (for operations). Whilst my job has taught me to treat the company as a legal entity that has a life separate from the lives of its stakeholders, I’ve also learnt that in serving the former I serve the latter. The stakeholders – clients, employees, collaboration partners, shareholders and the community – are always at liberty to engage with Sandberg or to walk away from it, but if they engage, it’s in their best interests that I keep the company healthy, purposeful and attractively transparent.

The world we see through the looking glass is characterised by fast-changing shifts in cultural norms, societal values and behaviours. There’s an increasing demand for responsible business practices, and many companies, including us, are working on a renewed brand purpose. This should benefit employees as well as clients. At the risk of sounding insensitive at a time when so many jobs are being lost, I surmise that work could now become the place where we feel more like ourselves than anywhere else. In an unpredictable world, having a job that aligns with our values can have a key role in helping us live out who we are.

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There are two main contributors to my colleague’s incredulity. The first one is the Nordic mentality. The second is the nature of the translation industry.

Janteloven (the Law of Jante) is an idea of equality where individuals ťĺ´Ç˛Ô’t think themselves as being any better than the rest of the community. You ťĺ´Ç˛Ô’t consider yourself any lesser either, but you try to see other people’s value as equal to your own. In the Nordic workplace, this mentality creates a culture where trust and respect do not have to be earned. I place substantial trust in each of my colleagues as a default. They can lose my trust, but they ťĺ´Ç˛Ô’t initially have to jump through hoops to earn it.

This is different from the UK company culture, which is characterised by a distinct hierarchy.ĚýThe polite and indirect communication style of British managers can disguise the fact that they are the sole decision makers at their company. In a earlier this year, a quarter of the UK employees interviewed said they had left a job because of a lack of trust in their workplace.

My British management peers might still have their junior employees make them a cup of tea, whereas I am sometimes found at the sink of our office kitchen cleaning dirty cups so that the others ťĺ´Ç˛Ô’t have to. For a Nordic professional, the CEO rolling up their sleeves is an indication of the high level of mutual respect between colleagues, regardless of their role in the organisation. Courtesy across the levels of hierarchy makes the office atmosphere more relaxed and minimises power games and the need for office politics.

The translation community is characterised by a similar disregard for hierarchy in its interactions and collaboration. Size does not always matter in our industry since specialisation lends importance to the smaller players. The client/subcontractor roles may alternate and be reversed in the complex supply chains. The need for innovation drives language companies into R&D partnerships and technical alliances. Business is still based on personal contacts and recommendations through networks.

I was contemplating these characteristics when planning STP’s campaign to support Translators without Borders in their holiday fundraising appeal this month.

STP has been a corporate sponsor of this charity for the past seven years. The focus of their work is to provide people with access to vital knowledge in their language. This involves translating for non-profit organisations in the areas of crisis relief, health and education, and training new translators in under-resourced languages.

STP is registered with Translators without Borders (TWB) as a reviewer and translation provider for the Nordic languages, but our languages are not the ones they need most. We only get to donate a few hours of linguistic and project management work every other month. Yet we cherish opportunities to raise awareness of why language matters in humanitarian work.

To this end, the members of the STP team have cycled through Hampshire as a part of TextPartners’ European tour (Operations Manager Susan Hoare), completed the Great South Run (Project Manager Emma Tamlyn) and had their hair dyed (Executive Chairman Jesper Sandberg). I myself walked around with “Language matters” tattooed on my back for two months last year.

To support this year’s holiday fundraising, we have set up a with a promise from the senior members of our management team to perform embarrassing dares for publication online as we hit certain milestones.

Rosie Marteau, TWB Senior Development Officer commented: “TWB is privileged to have the support of its colleagues in the commercial language industry, including STP who have been steadfast allies of our work for many years”.

“In many ways we are two sides of the same coin; just as LSPs deliver translation services for corporate clients and brands, we support global charities and small local NGOs alike to ensure their life-saving information is in a format and language that people can understand, at times of humanitarian crisis. We understand each others’ work, and that makes us a natural fit for CSR partnerships such as STP’s sponsorship”.

The work of Translators without Borders is of course serious, and it deserves to be supported even without silly dares like ours. But in the spirit of Janteloven, we wanted to muck in, add a little extra incentive and a touch of Christmas cheer to . We hope you enjoy!

To read more about the work of Translators without Borders, visit

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A Frenchman, an American and a Finn are walking in the grasslands of a savannah and come across an elephant.

The Frenchman looks at the handsome animal and thinks to himself, “What fantastic dish could I make out of that elephant?”

The American looks at the elephant and thinks, “How could I make the most money out of that animal – selling it off in bits or parading it in a circus?”

The Finn doesn’t even look at the elephant.

He just stares at his own shoes, shifts nervously from one foot to the other and focuses hard on one single question: “What does that elephant think of me?”

How aware is too aware?

As a Finn myself, I see some truth in this stereotype. And I do catch myself thinking quite frequently about the image I project – especially at industry events.

I always try to make sure that my suitcase contains a range of business wear that strikes the right balance between professional respectability and personal flair.

I’m writing this very post from a conference, as it happens, where I’m surrounded by European translation company executives. I’m among peers who know me quite well and possibly even like and respect me.

Some of them are clients. A few may be competitors. But we’ve come together to network and discuss issues that are common to us all.

How concerned, then, should I be about the image I project to them – both personally and for the company I represent?

Not as concerned as the cripplingly self-conscious Finn in the joke I just told you, that’s for sure. Such navel-gazing is of little value, and it’s not at all attractive to others.

But the fact is that, in business, image does matter. And the opinions and perceptions of our industry peers are extremely important. I’m sure you also stop to think about your image from time to time – if not your own, then at least your company’s.

Maintaining the right image is crucial – whether you wish to be seen as an all-knowing, omnipotent boss in the eyes of your staff, a pioneering visionary in front of your industry peers, or a successful localisation expert in the minds of your clients.

But it’s also incredibly difficult. Our personas, activities and perceived achievements are constantly analysed by our potential business partners and used to define who we are, how we work, and what we can and cannot offer.

The digital world of today makes things even harder, as we’re often judged before we even get a chance to prove ourselves in person.

The value of goodĚývalues

As a businessperson, projecting the right personal image is much easier when you have a solid set of company values to guide you.

In my case, if I ever need a nudge in the right direction, I can always look to STP’s values. They are sašúźĘ´ŤĂ˝, which stands for No-nonsense, Open, Respectful, Diverse, Innovative and Committed.

The values are designed to depict who we are and guide how we behave – both online and off. ‘No-nonsense,’ for example, means we should try to be clear, concise and efficient in our communication, so as not to confuse our recipient or waste their time.

For each of the values, we also have a set of corresponding anti-values that define what kind of people, behaviour and communication we definitely ťĺ´Ç˛Ô’t want the company to be associated with.

Rather than promote these values as words, our aim is for you to experience them in your dealings with STP. Or in your dealings with me.

Openness should characterise our online presence and our involvement in the translation industry. Innovation should permeate the way we employ technology and work with academic institutions. And our commitment must shine through in the way we serve our clients and suppliers.

Our company values cannot just be a list of impressive but empty words. They must reflect who we are, who we aspire to be, and how we wish to be seen by others. We must all be identifiable by them.

Does my bottom line look big in this?

Am I image conscious? I guess I am. As the leader of a well-known company, it’s hard not to be. And while I know clothes and manners do not make the man, I think that once he is made, they can greatly improve his appearance.

I want the way STP speaks, acts and looks – online and off – to match how we speak, act and look in our daily work and internal dealings. I want our external image to sell us well, because I know we are well sellable.

In fact, STP’s image would do well to mirror – metaphorically, of course – the understated elegance I aim for with my conference wardrobe.

No frills, no power suits, no high heels. Simplicity that stems from confidence. Practicality that speaks of good health and fitness. A bit of loose material to cover the less perfect bits. A dash of verve. A nod to the latest trends.

And definitely no black.

The post Director’s Cut, take 9: Image conscious appeared first on sašúźĘ´ŤĂ˝.

By ‘virtual teams,’ I mean geographically dispersed groups of in-house staff who engage in interdependent tasks for shared goals and projects. I ťĺ´Ç˛Ô’t mean just any odd group of remote colleagues.

In a translation company, a virtual team may be a group of project managers serving the same clients. Or a team of translators with the same mother tongue revising each other’s work or concurrently translating different parts of the same text.

It may also be a language technology group troubleshooting and processing files for the aforementioned colleagues, or a management team directing the whole show. In a virtual team, these people interact electronically rather than face-to-face and can be based in different offices, time zones and even continents.

Virtual teams, real costs

The prospect of eliminating office-related overheads may appear to explain the popularity of virtual teamwork. The reality, however, is that few of us with remote-working setups have abolished offices altogether.

Indeed, it’s common for translation companies to maintain both the office infrastructure, with the associated costs of rent, lease, electricity, furniture and hardware, plus the extra technology and remote setup needed to support virtual teams.

STP has physical offices in four locations, with nearly a hundred desktop PCs – and a large number of remote workers – connecting to the same virtual server every day. The company provides the hardware for both the office and remote environments. So we could hardly say that we facilitate remote working for cost-saving reasons.

Many translation companies build global networks of staff so that they can provide a 24/5 service. To turn work around as quickly as possible, projects are handed from colleague to colleague, and from one time zone to the next. In this context, the need for virtual teams is clear.

In truth, however, most of us have our virtual teams much closer to home: in the same continent, country or even town. We bear the inconvenience of geographically dispersed teams, but reap none of the rewards of around-the-clock cover.

Some employees claim that they’re more efficient when working from home. While it may be true that an empty house holds fewer distractions than a crowded office, I have little statistical evidence of STP’s translators or PMs becoming more productive after transferring from the office to a home-working arrangement. This, therefore, cannot be the reason for favouring virtual teams either.

So why do we do it?

Everyone agrees that there are numerous disadvantages inherent in virtual teams. Communication suffers from team members’ inability to read nonverbal cues. Virtual meetings allow no time to build relationships, which in turn leads to an absence of collegial spirit and makes it difficult to establish trust and rapport.

Virtual teams, in our experience, find it more difficult to express opinions, manage conflicts and make decisions. They’re also harder to monitor, support technically and engage beyond their routine tasks.

At STP, we support virtual teams because they allow us to hire from a greater pool of talent than any single office location can offer. They also help us to retain employees who start in an office but face change at some point down the line. The employee wants a change of scenery, their partner moves, their growing family brings a new need for flexibility, or they simply struggle in an office environment.

When these employees are allowed to work from their chosen location, they remain loyal and stay with us for longer. If they work from home, they save hours in travel time, are able to attend to personal or family matters and can adjust their working environment to their personal taste. The employer, meanwhile, should benefit from having a member of staff with increased focus and energy for their work.

Training and comms: the keys to virtual success

One of our biggest challenges with virtual teams at STP is providing adequate training, support and mentoring for newcomers during the first six months of their employment. Face-to-face contact with a supervisor or teammate is just so much better than virtual when it comes to building relationships and fostering trust.

We manage this by having all newbies complete a week of office-based induction training – an essential foundation for effective teamwork later on. This means, however, that we must keep enough senior colleagues working in those locations to help the newcomers. Sometimes the right colleagues are simply not in that office, and need to be brought in temporarily for the initial training period.

During their induction week, new employees meet our senior managers and other key members of their team. Then, when they eventually slot into their place in their own virtual team, they are assigned a mentor. They also join Yammer, our company social network, where we have 80 different collaboration groups. Some are compulsory for everyone, some are team-specific, and some are down to the interests of the individual.

From there, nearly all our collaboration and communication takes place online. We do small meetings and one-to-ones on Skype. We use tools like TeamViewer for help with technical troubleshooting, when someone wants to shadow another colleague, or when IT or language technology needs to take over the control of somebody’s computer remotely.

All of our large internal meetings have a virtual element to them – some people attend in person, others join via GoToWebinar – and many meetings are recorded for those who could not attend at all. To ensure efficiency and effectiveness, we’ve found it’s a good idea to ban multi-tasking during all virtual meetings.

Remote, but not detached

When managing virtual teams, it’s particularly important to be able to measure their work output. Both managers and team members must be clear on what the key indicators of success for that team are. Managers should then track productivity consistently, both at individual and team level, and share the results with their team as quickly and transparently as possible.

It’s equally vital to set up virtual ‘water coolers’ where employees can meet online for informal chats. We have an open group called Coffee Break in Yammer for this purpose. Unlike in the real world, though, everyone else can easily listen in to the smart, entertaining exchanges that take place there – and even give the occasional shy thumbs-up.

Often the discussions end up providing a delicious mix of professional and personal insight. It was on STP’s Yammer, for instance, that I first learned how rude it is to end an instant message with a full stop. Something my very unvirtual children had shockingly allowed to go unchecked for years.

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