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Breakout Business English - Improve your vocabulary and confidence using English at work.

Breakout Business English is all about improving your confidence, vocabulary, grammar and fluency in Business English. If you're not a native English speaker and you use English as a 2nd language to communicate at work then this podcast is definitely for you! You’ll find tips, strategies, and tools to grow your professional communication skills, as well as vocabulary episodes aimed at giving you new, advanced, professional vocabulary around workplace themes. We explore how you can express yourself better and build better professional relationships with your colleagues, customers, and clients. If you’re interested in becoming a better professional tomorrow than you are today, then you're in the right place and I'm excited to have you on the team. Let's get started!

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Breakout Business English - Improve your vocabulary and confidence using English at work.

Talking about WORK LIFE BALANCE - Business English lesson

October 02, 2024 • Chris - Breakout Business English

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Today we're talking about work like balance. This is one of the most important topics that we discuss with our colleagues and friends so today I want to give you some vocabulary and ideas to make you more confident and fluent when speaking about this subject. Maybe you want to ask your boss if you can work from home, or maybe you're trying to protect your time and stop working on weekends! Hopefully today's podcast can give you some tools, tips, and ideas for how to do this. We'll talk about some natural and native ways to talk about your journey to and from work and negotiating for more time when scheduling deadlines. Also, if you're taking the IELTS or TOEIC tests, hopefully you'll find some useful, natural, and native sounding vocabulary here too that can improve your score.

This podcast is all about helping you to communicate better, in English, at work. I work with international English speakers from around the world who use English, at work, as a second or third language and I hope that I can bring some of the ideas, vocabulary, and grammar, from those sessions, to you in this podcast.

Don't forget, if you want to work with me in one on one, private sessions then I am a full time Business English coach and tutor. I spend my whole professional life helping international professionals to improve the way that they communicate at work. If you'd like to book some of my time, listen right to the end of the podcast to find out how you can get on my schedule.

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Welcome back to the Breakout Business English podcast. My name is Chris and I’m a business English coach and tutor, and my full time job is helping people to communicate better at work. Today our topic is going to be work life balance. If you're anything like me then your work life balance has changed as you've gone through your career. Sometimes you're working too hard, sometimes you have the ability to work a lot more than you are. Today we're going to look at some vocabulary that we can use to talk about work life balance with our friends and colleagues. We'll also discuss some tips for improving your work life balance. After we've been through all of the vocabulary that I've got for you today we'll finish with a quiz to see how much you remember. So, with that said, let's get started.

Let's start with a piece of vocabulary and this word is "commute", "commute". That's spelled C O M M U T E. Your commute is the journey that you take between work and home and then back again. Over the course of my career I've commuted by train, car, bus, and of course on foot. If I'm honest I think I enjoyed commuting by train the most. Even though I really like driving, there's something really nice about having some time to myself to sit and read a book on the way to and from work. Maybe you agree with me? Let's take a look at a couple of examples of how to use this word.

How was your commute this morning? Did it take long to get in?

I commuted on the bus until I learned to drive.

If you commute on foot you'll probably get in a lot quicker.

In that first example you heard "commute" used as a noun, "your commute". Then in the second example it was used as a verb, "I commuted". Commute is a really easy to used verb and definitely a great one to add to your vocabulary.

We also heard the phrasal verb to "get in" in the first two examples. "Get" can be a really complicated and confusing verb. Native speakers seem to use it everywhere and it has lots of different meanings. In fact, if you try to search for a definition on the internet you'll find that you will get around 20 or more results. The best and shortest explanation that I can give you is that "get" usually means a change in situation. A change from one state to another. Most of the definitions that you'll find involved some kind of change. So, in this context to "get in" means to arrive at work. In other contexts it can also mean to arrive home. For instance, "I got in at 9am and went straight into a meeting" or, "I'm meeting some friends after work so I probably won't get in until 10pm". Needless to say, the length of your commute can have quite a big impact on your work life balance. I'm quite lucky these days, I work from home, so I don't really have a commute. However, I once had a commute of around 2 hours, including walking, a bus, a train, and then some more walking. I definitely didn't have very good work life balance at that time.

So, if you want to improve your work life balance then one of the best ways to do this is to start working from home. Then you don't have to deal with a commute at all! You can walk from your bedroom to a desk or table and start work immediately! In that case, let's talk about how you can ask your boss about working from home. First, let's take a look at a couple of example sentences that you might want to include in your conversation.

I wonder if you'd be open to discussing myself working from home.

Maybe we could try it out on a trial basis.

I've come up with a few reasons why this might actually be good for the team too.

In our first example there we had a great phrase, and that was, "to be open to something", "to be open to something". If you're open to something then you are willing to discuss it. If doesn't mean that you're going to accept the idea, but only that you are happy to talk about it. This should be the first step in your request. Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket and immediately just asking your manager if you can work from home, instead, try starting by asking for a one on one meeting to discuss the idea. We also heard the phrasal verb, "to try out". This phrasal verb is very close to the meaning of the verb on it's own. If you try something out then you test it to see if it's the right choice for a particular purpose. You might try out a new way to commute to work, or try out a new cafe to see if you like their coffee. You can use "test out" in the same way. Just add the preposition "out" after the verb "test" and you have a phrasal verb with the same meaning. Feel free to try out or test out these phrasal verbs next time you try something new. Then in our third example we heard the phrasal verb, "to come up with". If you come up with something then you think of it and suggest it. For instance, while I'm writing this podcast I need to come up with a list of useful vocabulary for you. Or maybe when you're trying to solve a problem, you could come up with a list of possible solutions.

Of course, before you start working from home full time, maybe you could start with a hybrid arrangement. You can use the word "hybrid" to talk about anything that is a mixture of two other things. Maybe you have a department at work that deals with sales AND customer service. So instead of having two different departments, you have one hybrid department. We hear this word used a lot these days to describe cars which use electricity or petrol, gasoline, to run. So a hybrid job is one where you work part of the time from home and part of the time from the office.

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One funny thing when talking about work life balance in English is the amount of vocabulary that we use to compare ourselves to computers and electronics. Perhaps it's because we spend so much time at work around computers, phone, and other electronics. Let's take hear a couple of examples of how this works.

I need a couple of weeks off to recharge.

Even when I'm on vacation I never feel like I can fully disconnect.

It can be great to take a break and unplug.

Let's take a look at some of that vocabulary. We started there with the verb, "to recharge", "to recharge". Just like you can plug your mobile phone in at the end of the day to recharge it's battery, we do the same to ourselves when we go on vacation and get away from work for longer periods of time. In fact, if you want to take it a little further, you can talk about recharging your batteries, as in "I've had a couple of weeks to recharge my batteries and now I'm ready to get back to work!"

We also heard the verb, "to disconnect, "to disconnect". When you are at work you are connected to your colleagues and your tasks. So, in the same way that you would disconnect your computer from a network, or disconnect it from a charging cable, you can disconnect yourself from all of the things associated with work.

If you use this vocabulary, it's generally considered informal, but still professional. It's definitely vocabulary I've heard many times in English speaking workplaces!

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One thing that you might need to deal with when trying to improve your work life balance is that you might need to tell people, "no", and I think some people are better at this than others. I know that I've gone through stages in my career when I've been really good at telling people no. At protecting my time and declining work when I feel it's necessary. I also know that there have been times in my professional life when I've taken on too much work and said yes to far too many requests. So let's take a look at some ways that we might say no to people in different situations.

I hope you don't mind if I get back to you on Monday.

I wish I could help you out but I really don't have the capacity right now.

I'm actually a bit overwhelmed with work right now. In fact, I'm snowed under.

OK, let's start by talking about the idiom in that last example, and that was to be "snowed under". Imagine it's snowing so heavily that everything is covered in a heavy blanket of snow. We can use this same idea with work. If you have so much work that you can't really do anything other than think about your tasks, then you're snowed under. The word "overwhelmed" and the idiom "to be snowed under" are synonyms, so they mean the same thing. However, idioms are almost always less formal. So you can use either of these to say that you have so much work to do that you can't possibly agree to accept more.

In the first example there we heard the phrasal verb "to get back to" someone. If you get back to someone then you respond to an email or message, or if you missed their call then you call them. Maybe someone has asked you to find some information for them. You could also use "get back to" to talk about providing them with that information. We usually use this phrasal verb when there has been some kind of delay. Don't forget, "get" is an irregular verb, so we can't just add "ed" to the end in the past tense. The past tense of "get" is "got", therefore in the past tense we might say something like, "They eventually got back to me with their answer".

Also, just briefly, we heard there the phrasal verb, "to help out". "Help out" is a really easy phrasal verb because the meaning of the phrasal verb is the same as the meaning of the verb on it's own. By adding "out" we're simply making it less formal.

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Let's move on now to talk about managing expectations. One of the first things I learned when I started working in sales at 16 years old is that one of the most important things to be aware of is your customer's expectations. When I eventually became a manager in my mid-twenties I realized that this not only applied to my customers but also the team that reported to be and the managers that I reported to in turn. Knowing what someone exects of you and making decisions to influence that is key to negotiating, especially on matters of time. So if someone asks for something

I'm hoping to get around to that by the end of the day.

Would it work for you if I got that finished by Thursday?

Notice in that last example I used the phrase, "if I get that finished", instead of just "If I finish". Native speakers often use the word "get" followed by the past participle form of a word, to make a sentence less formal. So instead of "they gave me a promotion", we might say, "I got given a promotion".

As part of managing expectations we can also sometimes negotiate for more time, especially on deadlines that can be extended. In a TED talk from 2021, Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans talked about how we often learn in business school how to negotiate for more money. However, it's far less common to be taught about negotiating for more time. For instance, if you have a deadline for Monday morning, try asking to move the deadline to Tuesday morning instead. This way you're far less likely to end up working on your weekend. She mentions that data shows employees who proactively asked for more time reported lower levels of stress and burnout, and were seen as more committed and professional by their colleagues. Let's take a look at a couple of phrases to help you out here:

Can I ask, would it have much of an impact if we pushed back that deadline to Tuesday?

I'd really appreciate a little more time on this, just so that I can make sure I'm delivering the best work possible.

In that first example sentence there we heard the phrasal verb, "to push back". To push back has a couple of different meanings in professional English. In some contexts it can mean to disagree or oppose an idea. However, in this context it simply means to delay or postpone something. For instance, "we pushed back the meeting to next week to give us more time to prepare".

You might also notice that I began the question in the first example with "can I ask?" Often, to be polite in English, we are simply trying to be less direct. Starting a question with, "can I ask" is a particularly indirect and polite way to do this. For instance, "Can I ask, what time does the meeting start?"

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Ok, let's see how much of today's vocabulary you can remember with a short quiz. The first piece of vocabulary I want you to tell me today is the word that we can use to say that something is a combination of two different things. This word begins with the letter H and is often used to talk about cars. And this word is, "hybrid" for instance.

"I don't want to work from home full time, but I'd like to have a hybrid job".

Let's go for a phrasal verb now that we can use to talk about delaying or postponing an event. In some contexts this can also be used to disagree with someone or show that you don't think something is a good idea. The preposition in this phrasal verb is "back" and the verb is "push", so this is "to push back". As in,

"We've pushed back the presentation so now you have all week to work on it".

Next, let's go even more informal with an idiom. Can you tell me an idiom that we can use to talk about having too much work. A phrase that we can use to talk about having no capacity for any more work load. This is an idiom that uses a kind of weather and this is to be "snowed under". For instance,

"I've been snowed under all week so I really can't stop and chat".

OK, let's go for one more. Can you give me any verbs that we would usually use to talk about electronic devices, that we can also use to talk about ourselves when we take a break from work. We've got verbs beginning with D, U, and R, and those are disconnect, unplug, and recharge.

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Finally, I'd like to give you a speaking challenge. One of the best things that you can do for your speaking, especially if you don't have many opportunities to speak English in your real life, is to practice when you're alone. Even if you speak English ever day, speaking when you're alone gives you the freedom to try out new vocabulary and speak without worrying about what other people think or whether or not they understand you. If you'd like some tips on how to do this or a good method to follow then feel free to listen to episode 3 of this podcast where I talk about a couple of different methods to make this practice as helpful as possible. So, for this speaking challenge I suggest you set a 2 minute timer and try to speak for this long when answering. For some of you this might be really difficult, you might find it challenging to keep your answer this short, for others of you you'll find that the real challenge is to speak for that long. So here's your question:

Do you think work-life balance has become easier or more difficult to achieve for society as a whole over the past 20 years?

And of course, when you're speaking, try to use as many of the pieces of vocabulary from today's episode as possible! If you want to make this challenge a little harder for yourself, try moving from the past tense, to the present, and then to the future tense. A lot of people find it easy to answer entirely in the present tense, but really challenging when they need to speak about the past. This is actually the kind of task that I give the international English speakers I work with to complete between our sessions, so I hope you find it as useful as they do!

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Don't forget, if you'd like to work with me one on one in a video call to improve the way that you use English to communicate at work then you can head over to www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com and book some of my time. Also, if you're listening on Apple podcasts or anywhere else that you can leave a review, please do so. It really helps me out and let's other people know that there is value in this podcast.

Until next time, thank you so much for your time and I'll speak to you again soon on the Breakout Business English podcast.

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