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The budget is approved and the team wants to get started. Then comes the question that begins every language programme: what format do we choose? Group training, individual training and blended learning are listed side by side in quotes as if they are equivalent options. But the choice makes more...

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The training plan has been approved, the team is on board, and then finance asks the inevitable question: “What is this going to cost?” You open a few language training providers’ websites and find… almost no prices anywhere. Every page says “request a quote”. Frustrating,...

The Netherlands ranks first out of 123 countries in the EF English Proficiency Index 2025. For the seventh year in a row. You would think business English is a solved problem here. Yet almost every HR and L&D professional recognises the same pattern. The emails are fine, the small talk...

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes False friends are words that look alike in two languages but mean something different, and between Dutch and German they are everywhere. In part 1 of this series we covered five of them. In this second part: five more false friends to watch out for...

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes False friends are words that look or sound the same in two languages but mean something different. Dutch and German share a surprising number of them, and precisely because the languages are so similar, people fall for them more easily. In this article: five false...

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes It is one of the most common objections in conversations about language training: “We already did a course once, but it didn’t stick.” The team got ten weeks of lessons, everyone was enthusiastic, and a few months later most of it had faded away. Not...

The moment a language programme appears on the training budget, one question follows almost immediately. What does the organisation actually get back? For HR and L&D teams, that is harder to answer than it looks. The cost of a course is easy to read off an invoice. The return shows...

The meeting starts in English. Everyone nods, the agenda gets going, and then someone asks a question in Dutch. The answer comes back in Dutch too. Within five minutes the whole meeting has switched, and your new colleague from Spain sits there, watches it happen and slowly tunes out. Nobody...

You have just hired the international specialist you spent months looking for. The working language is English, the collaboration is going well, and on paper everything is sorted. Yet you see it happen in many organisations: a few years later that same person is gone. Not because the work disappointed...

Most teams in Dutch organisations speak decent English. Good enough for an email, a call with a foreign colleague, a presentation that just about lands. But between “decent” and “truly fluent” sits a grey zone that nobody measures, and that still costs time and money every week. This article is...