AKE Ltd AKE Ltd logo

AKE Limited, based in Hereford, is one of several West Midlands winners of a Queen’s Award for International Trade 2005. The company, of roughly 50 employees, specialises in security and risk consultancy, training, intelligence and support services. With global offices in London, Washington, Sydney and Baghdad, language skills are a must in order to maintain good communication both within the company and with clients.

Established in 1991 to offer risk reduction training and support services for companies and individuals operating in challenging environments, AKE claims to be the world leader in its field and has more than merited its recent award thanks to quadrupling exports in the past three years. This would not have been possible without recruiting language skills to overcome the barriers exposed by the Arabic, African and Portuguese speaking customers in some of the world’s most hostile regions.

To overcome these barriers, AKE have recruited staff with existing language skills, enabling them to build up an experienced workforce from a wealth of international professional backgrounds. They also employ external language training and guidance from the local staff in the areas where they are operating.

Since implementing language skills into their own export strategy, AKE have been able to pass on the benefits to their customers by offering some of their training classes in dual languages, such as Arabic and Spanish and including cultural awareness training as part of their region-specific courses.

As Tim Crockett, Executive Director, iterates:

‘Being able to deliver a number of our core training programmes in Arabic, by Arabic speaking instructors, within a safe and secure environment, has enabled us to deliver yet another unrivalled service to our clients, allowing them to enhance their own operations whilst addressing the important safety and security needs of their personnel.’

For more information about AKE Ltd visit their website at www.akegroup.com

 

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