A strong regional dialect or foreign accent can obstruct career paths. Fair or not, most businesses, especially in the customer-service sector, want employees who can be the most easily understood by the broadest customer base.
Human-resource executives illustrated the point when they listened to 10 identical audio clips, each spoken in a different regional accent by 10 different white men. The passages were sent to them as a research project by two University of North Texas professors.
The hiring managers were asked to guess the personal characteristics of each speaker and say what job would be appropriate for each. Speakers with strong New Jersey and Georgia accents got the lowest evaluations, despite being the two most educated “applicants.” The nasal Joisey accent and the Jawjuh drawl carried connotations that overrode other considerations.
Federal regulations and case law say employers can’t discriminate based on accent linked to national origin. In those cases, courts have ruled and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines say the failure to hire or the reason for firing must be based on qualifications or job performance, not accent alone.
But there’s no EEOC regulation to protect the person who says dees instead of these or yaw’ll instead of you all.
Neither is the use of street slang protected. Typically, speech discrimination in those cases is difficult to prove. Yet there’s little doubt it happens.
In metropolitan areas such as Kansas City, home to many large call centers, the lack of an identifiable accent is prized.
In fact, in that same North Texas study, the candidates who had nondescript California or Midwest accents earned the highest ratings from the human-resource executives.
Obviously, a born-and-bred dialect can’t be turned off overnight. And besides, a lot of people wouldn’t want to do it. But workers who think their accent, dialect or use of grammar has impeded their careers can undertake speech training.
Speech training is a personal choice. Personal goals, professional choices and eagerness to change are all involved. It requires persistence and hard work, and it’s not for everyone.
If speech overhaul isn’t in the picture, the best odds for career success may be in jobs where verbal communication isn’t as primary a concern.
