Cover of the textbook Outcomes Advanced - Student's Book

The key answer of exercise 8

The key to exercise solutions in chapter 9 - Out of the office for the textbook Outcomes Advanced - Student's Book with authors Carol Nuttall and Amanda French from National Geographic Learning

Question

Listen again. Then work in pairs and answer the questions.

Answer

  1. one in three mid-week visitors to a UK theme park had phoned in sick, employees spend 8.3 hours a week accessing non-work-related websites, 24% (of working Americans) said they had fallen asleep at their desk, in a toilet or at a meeting. Bolchover’s point is that we slack (are lazy) in the workplace and nobody wants to do anything about it.
  2. the conspiracy is that it suits both sides to keep quiet – workers have no vested interest in saying they do nothing, and businesses don’t want to say they’re inefficient – they want to maintain their image of being highly efficient.
  3. Because workers feel a disconnection with big companies. Unlike with small companies, employees don’t see how their small contributions fit into the whole picture
  4. Bolchover suggests breaking up large companies into smaller competitive units so that workers can see how failure to pull their weight can directly impact on colleagues and the company.