At Belighted, we have native French and Dutch speakers. However, the language used for informal communication in our team is French, as we are located in the Walloon Region of Belgium (and, to be honest, also because the Dutch level of most of our French-speaking guys is not that impressive!).
But, working in IT, where English is the predominant language, we try to use as much English as possible, mostly for written conversation (and coding, obviously), but also sometimes when speaking.
This is why we have introduced several months ago the concept of “English-speaking Fridays”. During an English-speaking Friday, everybody in the team only speaks English. This means our meetings are obviously in English, but also our lunch time together, and even conversations between two people from the same native language. Up until now, the English-speaking Fridays have taken place every other Friday, but we have decided to have it every week from now on.
The result? Both fun and self-improvement in English speaking. It was a bit awkward in the beginning, and it’s sometimes tempting to go back to speaking in your native language when you want to explain something difficult, but for the most part, everybody plays the game. It’s often interesting because when you want to say something that you can’t, you try and ask someone else how to say it, or look it up on the Internet. In the end, you always learn new stuff, which is the basic aim of the concept.
The only exception to our “only English” rule is when we pick up the phone to talk to customers or partners. Indeed, they are used to us speaking French and we cannot force them to share our internal habits. However, we might try to change that as well in the future!