Bill 96 in Québec Brings Up Important Point About Training in Native Language Everywhere

A new law in Québec, Canada, that goes into effect this June  will require all policies and training materials assigned to employees within the province be provided in French. 

The passage of Bill 96, as it’s called, means organizations based in Canada or any international company providing training content to remote users in Montréal, Québec City, or even lovely Mont-Tremblant, will be required to provide training in French to these users. 

I applaud the local government of Québec for these steps. While English has officially become the international language of business, vital employee training is most effective in the language the trainee is most comfortable with and is also more efficient and effective, according to trainingindustry.com. 

Localized Training Content for All

We recently spoke to a number of our customers and partners about the upcoming implementation of this law. One thing we talked about is the idea of having fully localized content for regions all over the world — an effort our global team is fully engaged with. 

As a global provider of training content, we have teammates all over the world working together to provide security and compliance content that addresses these global concerns in a way that is relatable to each region, with local language and local examples. 

Basic “translation” is often not good enough. We need full localization to make sure we connect with our trainees, especially when we are looking to change culture. This allows our content to go beyond making linguistic sense and resonate with the culture our trainees are in. See our support site for more information on our support for customers with relation to Bill 96. 

We are committed to providing the best localized content. As part of that commitment, we are continuing to dub Seasons 3 through 5 of “The Inside Man” in French (in addition to Seasons 1 and 2, which are already fully dubbed) and hope to have them available in time for Cybersecurity Awareness Month in October of 2023.

In addition to the 478 pieces of content we have available in French and 475 pieces of content in Canadian French — because yes, we find it important to provide content in the local dialect — we have been developing region-specific titles for both Canada and France, as well as many more countries. We recently released these modules in our Compliance Plus offering specifically for France and Canada:

• Sexual Harassment in the Workplace (France)
• Code de conduite -  Lignes directrices pour une collaboration efficace (France)
• Concurrence équitable - Droit de la concurrence (France)
• Cadeaux, pots-de-vin et corruption (France)
• Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act of Canada
• Getting To Know CASL (Canada)

The thoughtful effort KnowBe4 has been putting into these two French-speaking countries is just one example of how heavily we are investing in our 34 languages and in many other countries around the world with new Compliance Plus content. 

If you are a global company, have employees/users from outside your own country, or are facing the issues of global attacks and regulatory requirements, you have to take a global approach to training while considering the most effective way to resonate with all your employees in their different languages and cultures. I would bet we will be seeing more laws and requirements like Bill 96 to reflect this need.