Lauren Burke is a corporate library specialist at Astellas Pharma Inc., in charge of gathering and organizing tools and resources that support all sectors of the company.
While Astellas is based in Japan, it has large satellite offices in the United States, Germany, and Brazil, where it is not uncommon for Astellas employees to travel or relocate. As a result of the communication barriers, it was difficult for Astellas employees to collaborate efficiently.
After hearing about Mango Languages from meetings with the Northern Illinois Special Librarians’ Association, and seeing the company’s vibrant and energetic presence at multiple leading industry conventions, Lauren decided to give Mango Languages a call to see if they could help solve the cultural integration problems she was seeing with Astella’s reassignment process.
Astellas employees are frequently asked to fly to other company hubs to work, but without effective means of learning the language and culture of their destination. Fortunately, the Mango Languages app allows employees to learn anywhere, at any time, on any device. Users are also able to download lessons, which is ideal for the hectic travel schedule of an Astellas employee who may not always have an internet connection.
Though implementing a new resource seemed daunting at first, Lauren was surprised at how seamless it was to integrate Mango into Astellas’ company offerings. She began to hear frequently that the language-training system and its culture-learning features were improving employees’ ability to connect with colleagues across the globe.
It is not uncommon for family members of Astellas employees to also relocate, now multiplying the need to efficiently address communication barriers. Mango’s Family Profiles allow each user to add additional profiles, granting self-paced language-learning to the whole family and effectively alleviating the difficulties of integrating them comfortably into their new and unfamiliar transoceanic home.
Using Mango makes Lauren’s job easier. Previously, Astellas Corporate Library used language-learning software that included CDs and DVDs, or involved installation and heavy training. These resources began to add up in training supplies and labor hours. It was also difficult to track individual progress and usage as traditional language-learning software is not equipped for community usage.
With Mango’s cloud-based courses, the only instruction that is required of Lauren is guiding the employee through the app download and sign-in process — if required. From there, the learner can pick up their course at their leisure while Lauren monitors progress through Mango’s administrative dashboard, the Mango Admin Portal (MAP). Progress and usage tracking are imperative for Lauren as it lets her know whether Mango is a worthy investment.
About this company
As a company with locations on nearly every continent, Astellas Pharma Inc. needed a flexible, efficient language-learning app that adapted to the diverse communication demands of a globalized workforce. Astellas is able to address the needs of its employees and their families using Mango Languages.
