In today’s Business English News lesson, we look at developments in employment practices and how these effect job stability and opportunities for career development.
The world quietly passed a significant milestone recently – the global jobless total surpassed 200 million people, according to a study by the UN. To put that into perspective, that’s 30 million more without work than at the height of the recession in 2008. As CBC News reports, these figures could have grave implications for the future.
In this Video Vocab lesson, we’ll look at vocabulary related to human resources.
Human resources, or HR, is concerned with talent management and staff development. This may involve performance appraisals as well as learning and development to improve employees’ proficiencies. Employees may develop through on-the-job training as well as coaching. We’ll also cover equal opportunity initiatives and leadership development.
In this Video Vocab lesson, we look at English for human resources, or HR. People who work in HR think about a company’s headcount and how to recruit new employees or headhunt people from other companies. We’ll look at ideas such as job descriptions, as well as compensation and benefits, and how these differ from incentives.
In this Business English Pod lesson we continue our look at English idioms related to beginnings and endings.
A new year, a new job, a new office, a new project, a new team – all these new things mean exciting beginnings. And beginning something new usually means finishing something else. Every day at work, at home, and at the coffee shop we talk about these changes.
In English, we have lots of useful idioms for talking about the beginnings and endings that make up the changes in work and life. Today, we’ll look at some of these expressions and talk about how to use them.
In the dialog, we will rejoin Henry and Darren, two old colleagues who are sitting down for coffee and talking about life and work. In our last lesson, they focused on family. In today’s dialog, we’ll hear about their work and careers, and they’ll use lots of great idioms about beginnings and endings.
Listening Questions
1. What big career decision has Henry made?
2. Why did Darren leave his former job?
3. What did Darren decide to do after leaving his job?
Welcome back to Business English Pod today’s lesson on English idioms related to beginnings and endings.
When someone asks you about your life or work, what do you talk about? Well, chances are that you talk about changes. You talk about the beginning of new things and the end of old things. That means a new job, a new project, or a new house. Or it means quitting your old job, finishing a big project, or selling the home you’ve lived in for 20 years.
Yes, these changes are what make life and work interesting. And in English we have lots of great idioms related to beginnings and endings. Some expressions are used for daily beginnings and endings, some for huge life changes. Today we’ll look at some of these idioms and how to use them.
You will hear a conversation between two friends, Henry and Darren, who used to work together. Now Darren is on a business trip to Henry’s city and has decided to pay Henry a visit. We’ll hear them talk about life and work, and you’ll hear many idioms related to beginnings and endings in their conversation.
Listening Questions
1. What bad news does Darren talk about?
2. What is Darren’s good news?
3. What does Darren think about Henry’s daughter’s current activities?
