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19th November 2025

Closing the global English skills gap: Lessons for business leaders

Insights from the 2025 EF English Proficiency Index

English remains the world’s shared language of business, underpinning collaboration across borders and access to knowledge in almost every industry. However, the EF English Proficiency Index (EPI) 2025 shows that while demand for English skills continues to rise, global progress has stalled, and the gaps that remain could affect how companies operate worldwide.

Based on data from 2.2 million adults across 123 countries, this year’s index measures all four language skills – reading, listening, speaking, and writing – for the first time. The results reveal that English proficiency is far from even. For multinational companies managing distributed workforces, they highlight where collaboration, communication, and efficiency may be at risk.

Dr. Christopher McCormick, Chief Academic Officer at EF Corporate Learning, highlights this year’s findings on global English skills.

Speaking is the world’s most underdeveloped business skill

Across the world, speaking remains the weakest English skill, even in countries with overall high proficiency. European markets that are home to many multinational headquarters and international teams, such as the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, rank in the very high proficiency category overall but only reach the moderate category for speaking skills. Meanwhile, only Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, which all have English as an official language, reach the high-proficiency band for speaking, and no countries achieve the very high level.

This global shortage of speaking skills has far-reaching implications, and for multinational companies it represents a hidden communication gap. Speaking is the skill that drives teamwork, negotiation, leadership, client relationships, and trust. Even employees who can read and understand English fluently may still hesitate or struggle to communicate confidently in real time. In this way, developing speaking confidence remains a high-value investment for global organizations.

Listening gaps could affect offshore and outsourced teams

Listening comprehension trails reading proficiency globally by more than 20 points, emerging as a weakness in many countries across South Asia, West and Central Africa, and Latin America. These regions play a central role in many global operations and service delivery models, meaning that any skills disparity could have direct implications for international organizations.

Teams that can interpret written communication effectively may still struggle to process spoken English, especially when it comes to understanding diverse accents, speech speeds, and colloquial phrasing. To avoid negative impacts on efficiency and customer satisfaction, training approaches that integrate listening exposure, contextual practice, and accent diversity can improve comprehension and strengthen communication flow.

Writing weaknesses pose operational and compliance risks

Writing proficiency varies significantly across regions. In several key business hubs such as Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, writing is the weakest English skill. In some cases, this reflects linguistic factors, such as adapting from right-to-left writing systems.

Uneven writing ability can have tangible business consequences. Inconsistent or unclear communication increases the risk of misunderstandings and costly errors, particularly in compliance-heavy areas such as contracts or regulatory reporting. It can also exacerbate cultural misinterpretations when tone or nuance is lost in translation. Strengthening written English across core business functions helps ensure clarity, precision, and trust throughout international operations.

What companies can do next

Historically, workplace English testing has focused on reading and grammar, because speaking and writing were harder to assess at scale. Now, AI-powered language assessment allows organizations to identify specific skill gaps across global teams with far greater precision.

Once those gaps are visible, targeted training strategies can help close them, whether this means improving writing accuracy in Latin America, listening fluency in Asia, or speaking confidence in Europe. AI-powered training can now offer a high degree of personalization to the individual, making it possible to target the areas that most affect performance.

For HR and L&D leaders, this represents a shift from broad, one-size-fits-all programs to data-driven development that builds measurable communication capability across regions. To understand how these trends vary globally and by industry, organizations can explore the findings in the EF English Proficiency Index 2025 and benchmark their own workforces against international trends.