Relocated, Hired—Now What? 5 Ways Employers Can Help Multicultural Talent Succeed in Chicago
Chicago continues to attract companies and the people they need to grow.
In 2025, the region recorded 223 new, expanded, or relocated company decisions, representing an estimated 19,600 jobs. The Chicago metro area's labor force remains close to five million people, and World Business Chicago reports that rising immigration flows helped drive the region's post-pandemic workforce rebound, with the labor force reaching its highest level in decades in 2024.
For employers, that's an important part of Chicago's talent story. Companies aren't just hiring locally. They're relocating employees, bringing international professionals onto U.S. teams, sponsoring highly skilled workers, and managing increasingly multicultural workplaces. Many of these professionals arrive with strong technical credentials, years of experience, and established track records in their fields — and with them comes a growing need for leadership communication for non-native speakers, not just onboarding logistics.
But getting talent to Chicago is only part of the equation. What happens after they arrive?
Relocating for work means more than learning a new commute or finding a neighborhood to call home. For international and multicultural professionals, particularly those communicating in English as an additional language, it can also mean learning a new workplace culture while establishing credibility, building relationships, and performing at a high level, all at once.
For employers who want to retain and develop this talent, watch for these five dynamics.
1. They may be translating more than their words
A highly skilled professional can be fluent in English and still need considerably more effort to communicate a complex idea in a fast-moving meeting.
Picture an engineer, data scientist, finance professional, or technical leader — the kind of talent that makes English for tech professionals in the U.S. such a specific communication challenge. They understand the problem clearly. Before speaking, they may also be thinking: "How do I explain this simply?" "Am I being too direct?" "Do I need more context?" "Is this the right word?" "How do I enter this conversation without interrupting someone?"
By the time they've formed the response, the conversation may have moved on. That hesitation can easily read as a lack of confidence or an insufficient command of the subject. In reality, the employee may be doing two jobs at once: thinking through the business problem and translating that thinking into the workplace's language and conventions.
This is one reason generic Business English training doesn't always go far enough for experienced professionals. It's also why more employers are investing specifically in Business English coaching for tech professionals and other technical roles, where vocabulary and grammar matter, but so do synthesis, spontaneity, strategic framing, and the ability to communicate under pressure.
What employers can do: Look beyond accent and grammatical accuracy when assessing communication. Give employees chances to practice the actual situations their roles demand: presenting recommendations, answering executive questions, facilitating meetings, managing disagreement, and translating technical information for different audiences.
2. Their leadership personality may not translate as easily as their expertise
Most of us know what it feels like to be more articulate in one setting than another. Now imagine building a career in a language that doesn't always let you bring your humor, warmth, or assertiveness as easily as your first language does.
An experienced manager who is decisive and engaging at home may sound more cautious in English. Someone who tells compelling stories in one language may become highly factual in another. A leader with a strong point of view may soften every recommendation because they're unsure how their tone will land.
What gets lost isn't necessarily competence. Sometimes it's range, and that range matters as professionals advance. Senior roles require more than correct answers; they require influence, persuasion, trust-building, and comfort with ambiguity. An accent is not evidence of unclear thinking. And executive presence with an accent is entirely achievable when development focuses on range, not elimination. For multicultural professionals, that development shouldn't be about sounding more American. The better question is: how can we help this person express more of the leader they already are?
What employers can do: When giving feedback about executive presence or communication style, make it behavioral and specific. "Be more confident" is hard to act on. "Lead with your recommendation before explaining the supporting analysis" gives someone something concrete to practice. Look for accent-friendly English fluency coaching that expands a person's repertoire rather than trying to replace their identity.
3. They're learning unwritten rules about hierarchy, authority, and speaking up
Language is only one part of workplace communication. Culture shapes what people believe they're allowed to say, to whom, and under what circumstances.
A professional may have spent much of their career in an environment where challenging a senior leader publicly would be inappropriate, where speaking over someone is disrespectful, or where self-promotion is frowned upon. Then they join a U.S. organization and hear: "You need to speak up more." "Push back." "Have a point of view." "Take up more space in the room."
Neither system is inherently right or wrong, but the transition between them can be significant. An employee's deference may be read as a lack of confidence. A thoughtful pause may be mistaken for uncertainty. Someone who waits to be invited into a discussion may find the invitation never comes. The reverse can happen too: habits that conveyed confidence or respect in one culture may land very differently in another.
This is where cultural communication training for professionals matters as much as language instruction. Employees can learn how influence and participation work in their new environment. Managers can get curious about the cultural assumptions behind the behaviors they observe.
What employers can do: Make expectations explicit. If you expect employees to challenge ideas, describe what productive disagreement looks like on your team. If visibility matters for advancement, show people what visibility actually means. And create more than one avenue for contribution, rather than rewarding only the people who are quickest or loudest in the room.
4. They're decoding a language no textbook can fully teach
Every organization has its own language: move the needle, take this offline, ballpark it, get in the weeds, circle back. But some of the hardest workplace language to decode is ordinary words carrying organizational meaning.
What does your company mean by "more strategic"? What does "executive presence" look like there? How much ownership does a manager expect when they say, "run with it"? Does "that's interesting" mean genuine interest, or polite disagreement? How urgent is "when you get a chance"?
These nuances can trip up native English speakers entering a new organization. For someone learning U.S. workplace norms while communicating in another language, several layers of meaning can pile up at once, and the challenge grows as employees become more senior.
Technical precision may have built their career, but leadership increasingly requires moving between audiences: from an engineering team to a client, from detailed analysis to an executive summary, from individual expertise to organizational influence — the kind of range that English public speaking coaching is designed to build. That's where executive communication becomes different from simply improving English proficiency.
What employers can do: Treat communication as a professional capability that can be developed, rather than assuming an internationally recruited employee will absorb every unwritten convention through exposure. Coaching is most useful when it's grounded in the employee's real meetings, presentations, and stakeholder conversations.
5. They're building a career while rebuilding a life
It's easy for organizations to think of relocation as a logistical process: the employee arrives, the paperwork is completed, the boxes get delivered, work begins.
But relocation is also psychological and social. A professional may be learning a new city, navigating unfamiliar systems, rebuilding friendships and professional networks, adjusting to different food, weather, and daily routines, and helping a spouse, partner, or children adjust, all at the same time.
Some visa-sponsored professionals also know that employment and the ability to remain in the country are closely connected. That can make interpersonal risk (e.g., disagreeing with a leader, admitting confusion, asking for help) feel more consequential than an employer realizes. Meanwhile, the person is expected to perform.
This is why belonging matters. And belonging is more than cultural celebrations or a warm onboarding. It includes relationships where people can ask questions without embarrassment, access informal knowledge, develop mentors and sponsors, and gradually contribute without constantly monitoring whether they're saying or doing the "right" thing. For international hires, professional and personal integration often happen at once.
What employers can do: Think beyond the first 30 or 90 days. Connect relocated talent with mentors, employee communities, and development resources. Train managers to check on integration, not just performance. Recognize that an employee may need different kinds of support at different stages of the relocation experience.
From relocation to integration
Chicago has compelling reasons to keep attracting international talent: one of the largest labor forces in the country, world-class companies and universities, a highly diversified economy, and growing industries that depend on specialized expertise. The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce's Workforce and Talent Council has identified talent retention and developing a skilled, diverse, and adaptable workforce as regional priorities.
Employers can think beyond recruitment. Relocation gets talent here. Integration helps them thrive here. And communication — including workplace English for multicultural leaders at every level — is one of the bridges between the two.
For some professionals, the right intervention may be mentoring. For others, it may be stronger manager support, cultural onboarding, or community-building. For highly skilled international professionals working in English as an additional language, individualized communication development can play an important role.
The goal isn't to make every employee communicate the same way. It's to help people develop enough range to make their expertise visible, participate fully, and lead effectively, without believing they need to leave parts of themselves behind.
Beyond Business English
At The Leadership Voice Studio in Chicago's The Loop, we work as an English communication coach for immigrant professionals and multicultural leaders navigating the demands of U.S. workplaces.
Our Executive and Business English Communication services are specially designed for highly skilled professionals, technical specialists, managers, and executives whose needs go beyond grammar or conversational fluency. Depending on the individual, our work may include communicating complex ideas more succinctly, presenting to senior stakeholders, speaking spontaneously in meetings, navigating disagreement, strengthening executive presence, or finding a leadership voice that still feels authentic in English.
For employers, one-to-one coaching can also be sponsored as a targeted development investment for international or multicultural employees preparing for greater leadership responsibility.
If you have a highly skilled employee whose expertise is clear but who could grow in confidence, clarity, or influence in a U.S. workplace, let's talk. Book a strategy session at our Chicago Loop studio or online.
Joyce Talag, MCC, is a Master Certified leadership and executive communication coach and founder of The Leadership Voice Studio in The Loop, Chicago. She works with international and multicultural professionals across technology, finance, consulting, and other professional fields, helping them find their voice and lead with it.
