Language audit – check the level of Polish in your team

How the audit works

The audit takes four steps and is entirely online – employees do not have to travel anywhere or install anything.

1. Conversation with the company – we establish how many people take part, what roles they work in and what the company expects of them in Polish.
2. Test for employees – everyone receives a link to an online test of grammar, vocabulary and comprehension. The test works on a computer and on a phone.
3. Analysis of results – the teacher compares the results with the requirements of the job roles.
4. Summary for the employer – levels, a proposal for groups and the programme priorities.

The audit is the first step of our cooperation with companies. An employee can also check themselves earlier in the publicly available level test.

What the summary for the employer contains

The summary answers three questions: what level the employees are at, how to divide them into groups and what to teach first. Below is an example for a fictitious warehouse team.

Example. The data in the table is fictitious and only shows the layout of the summary.

We describe levels using the A1–C2 scale – what each of them means is explained in our description of Polish language levels.

What an employee can do at a given level – at work

The level symbol alone tells a manager little, so in the summary we translate it into behaviour at the workstation.

What the audit does not measure

The test in the audit checks grammar, vocabulary and reading comprehension – it does not check speaking or writing. That is why we treat the result as a starting point: the teacher assesses speaking fluency in the first lessons and, if necessary, moves the employee to a different group. It happens that a person who talks a lot at work speaks better than the test indicates – and the other way round.

How to prepare the team for the audit

You can prepare the team for the audit in a few minutes – it is enough to tell employees clearly what the test is for.

• Explain the purpose – the test is used to divide people into groups and build the programme, not to assess the employee.
• Ask them to answer on their own – without help from colleagues or a translator on their phone; an inflated result means a group at too high a level.
• Give them time at work – a test taken in a hurry during a break gives a worse picture than a calm quarter of an hour.
• Send us information about job roles – without it, it is hard to judge whether a given level is enough for the job.

When it is worth doing an audit

An audit is worth doing when the company is making a decision in which the team's level of Polish matters.

• Before planning a course and a learning budget.
• After taking on a larger group of employees from abroad.
• Before promoting an employee to foreman or shift manager.
• When misunderstandings keep recurring over instructions or documents.
• After a few months of the course – to compare the level with the starting point.

After the audit we present a proposal for a course for employees, and progress during learning is shown by the monthly HR report.