English Language Needs among Services Sector Employees in Malaysia’s New Norm

Abstract

English proficiency is necessary for workplace communication. Working remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic means employees require more than good technical skills. They also require language skills for effective communication. The level of English proficiency may not meet the benchmarks established by the employers to be considered sufficient for effective workplace communication, thus, the objective of this paper is to explore English language needs among employees working in the services sector in Malaysia. To obtain this data, participants working in 12 areas of the services sector filled in a needs analysis questionnaire. Descriptive statistics (SPSS version 26) analysed the language skills that were most important to employees which were categorized under three main constructs namely, ‘necessities’, ‘lacks’ and ‘wants.’ Overall findings revealed that the two major language skills employees perceived they needed to improve on the most were speaking and reading. From the results, it is proposed that future researches sample a larger number of participants and apply a mixed method approach for a more in-depth study. Furthermore, the findings have implications for curriculum developers, subject specialists, educators and the services sector.