Blog

The first week of September has something of the first week of January. Full diaries, yes, but also fresh energy, new plans and a training budget that is still largely untouched. Starting a language programme in September also means an uninterrupted training rhythm ahead: no summer holiday that halts everything...

HR has done everything right. There is budget, there is a provider, there are eight sign-ups for the Dutch course. Six weeks in, four people are still attending, and two of those have not done their homework. Sound familiar? The problem is rarely the training itself. It is what has...

The first working day of your new international colleague. Laptop ready, buddy assigned, lunch arranged. The onboarding checklist is complete, except for one thing: language is not on it. Makes sense, you might think, the working language is English anyway. That is exactly where the problem starts, and it only...

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 is approved, the team is keen, and then finance asks the question: “What is this going to cost?” You open a few language training websites and find almost no prices anywhere. Everywhere it says “request a quote”. Frustrating, because all you want...

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...