The Business Value Of Getting People’s Names Right

Discover 4 tips for nailing name pronunciation

In 2013, Under Armour was an upstart sports apparel company when it landed basketball superstar Steph Curry. While the headline is history, what’s less known is why he ended up signing there: Because Nike botched it. One Nike official repeatedly mispronounced Curry’s first name in the pitch meeting.

 

Nike’s loss was Under Armour’s gain—an estimated $14 billion in brand value.
 
Messing up people’s names has a cost. In a recent NameCoach survey, we found that people whose names are mispronounced often feel annoyed, disrespected, alienated, or unimportant. And it happens far more often than companies realize. In the same study, 44% of participants said their name had been mispronounced in an interview. This is happening across workplaces, including by CEOs and HR leaders.
 
It’s a problem that companies can’t afford to keep making.

People’s names are deeply personal. There are family names, fathers’ names, names in honor of relatives who have passed. There are names that are cultural, names that are incidental. There are names grabbed from favorite characters or created because a parent liked the way the syllables sound. More fundamentally, names are the first sense of self that we have; your name is the initial identifier that connects you to yourself.
 
When we mispronounce someone’s name, we’ve telegraphed that we’ve distorted that person’s sense of identity. It can be subtle—but it’s there. The more it happens, the more it can feel like death by a thousand cuts.
 
In the workplace, accurately pronouncing someone’s name is vital to recruiting and retaining talented employees. In the recruiting and interviewing process, using a candidate’s name can build initial rapport and help a company stand apart. Done right, it can help a new employee feel at home during onboarding and orientation.
 
Pronouncing a colleague’s name correctly also contributes to psychological safety, that belief that you can speak up at work without being afraid of scorn or reprisal. A recent Harvard Business Review article noted that psychological safety has been “well established as a critical driver of high-quality decision making, healthy group dynamics and interpersonal relationships, greater innovation, and more effective execution in organizations.” On the flip side, people whose names are perceived to be hard to pronounce are often marginalized in the workplace. Colleagues, afraid of getting a name wrong, either point to that person to speak or ignore them entirely.

Don’t jeopardize your workforce talent because you haven’t learned to correctly pronounce people’s names. A workplace isn’t inclusive if people’s names are routinely and purposefully mispronounced. When there is a perceived lack of effort in learning the authentic pronunciation of a name, an employee may not feel valued, respected or even motivated - and this ultimately impacts productivity, not to mention the bottom line.
 
Here are 4 tips to improve name pronunciation in the workplace.

Sometimes it’s as simple as asking someone. Then it’s important to listen, repeat, and make sure you get the name right. Ask, too, if you’ve got it right, and try to remember so you won't need to ask again. This won't always be received as well as not needing to ask in the first place, but it's an important start. This works well in unplanned meetings where you have not had the opportunity to use a tool or do your research beforehand.

Whenever possible, do your homework beforehand. There are a variety of resources available, but beware that pronunciations may differ, for example, "Saoirse could be 'SEER-shah' or 'SUHR-shah' and Henri could be 'HEHN-ree' or 'awn-REE. There are new robust tools available that include not only a database of recorded names but also algorithms that help pinpoint the right one.

Barack Obama was well-known for his attention to correct pronunciation—but it didn’t come naturally. His staff included phonetic spellings of names and places in his daily briefing notes, or the person briefing him would coach him on how to pronounce the names. Former President Obama would privately practice pronouncing a foreign leader’s name a number of times before ever saying it publicly. He was also known to check with people to make sure he’d pronounced their names correctly.

Build the correct pronunciation of employee and client names into your corporate culture, your operational systems, and your day-to-day practices. Make accurate pronunciation a priority, much as you would get a phone number or email address correct the first time. In addition, demand that managers set the right example for their teams, and reinforce the importance of this practice through team meetings and training.
 
Most importantly, don’t leave anyone behind. Getting people’s names right isn’t an accident—it’s a decision. It takes work. But, as Nike learned the hard way, getting it wrong can be a very expensive mistake.