The Welsh Language Commissioner's office has created a series of short films which highlight effective practices from the point of Welsh language delivery and usage in various organisations across Wales.  

In the below blog Bethan Griffiths from the Welsh Language Standards team at the Welsh Government talks about how they are working towards ensuring that the national body operates bilingually by 2050.

 

We launched our internal use strategy: Cymraeg. It belongs to us all three years ago and within it we set the goal of becoming a truly bilingual organisation by 2050. The intention is a gradual change over time and we aim to implement it in five year cycles.  

We are fortunate within the Welsh Government to have strong leadership who are advocates for the Welsh language. The First Minister and the Permanent Secretary are, without a doubt, leading on that in their constant use of the language and the Senior Civil Service and our Senior Leaders are all encouraged to lead by example with regards to using the Welsh language and really mainstreaming the  Welsh language.  

As in many organisations, our digital work is now crucial in terms of communicating corporate messages and many of our digital officers now speak Welsh. Naturally, all our channels are bilingual, and what we are trying to foster is an environment where we think in Welsh, we create in Welsh, we draft in Welsh, and we learn from each other.  

Another thing that we’ve done which is crucial to the success of our strategy is that we have re-designed our language training offer. It is more extensive and more flexible than it has been in the past, and it has proven to be very popular among our staff.  

Finally we have also considered staff recruitment. We know over time that there will be a need to recruit more Welsh speakers to the organisation, and what we are doing now is looking at the way we describe the need for Welsh language skills in our recruitment material.  

Our hope is that all this together will ensure that the Welsh Government is an inclusive and welcoming body from a Welsh language perspective as we head confidently towards 2050.