Working from Home: Vocabulary, Phrases, and more

Hi, and welcome back to engVid with me, Benjamin.

Now, I'm sure you have noticed the rise in people using laptops in coffee shops.

Some people like it, some people don't.

Sometimes they're assigned saying, "Please don't", or after a certain hour, maybe it's

a no-laptop zone, but the reality is that people are working from home a lot more than

they used to.

We're starting to get co-working spaces popping up in every city around the world.

I've got a friend who runs one in Mallorca, I've got a friend who runs one in Saudi Arabia,

so they are there.

So, this video is looking a little bit at why that is the case, why people are starting

to move away from a job-focused, location-specific job and finding other ways of doing things.

And then in the second half of the lesson, we're going to look at phrases to use in a

conversation if you were looking to discuss your working conditions.

Okay, so this is not a lesson in anthropology, social anthropology.

So, when I say Generation Y, some of you may know - refer to it as Generation Z or Millennials.

I'm basically speaking about young people now, yeah?

People in their sort of 20s and 30s, because there is a shift happening.

Well, how are - how is this group of people different to what came before it, to the generation

that preceded it?

Well, loosely speaking, they are tech-savvy.

Tech short for technologically savvy, from the French word "savoir" - to know, yeah?

These people know how to work computers, how to rustle up a website in a matter of minutes,

knowing how to use Instagram, how to use all the other social media platforms.

Do you know how to use them?

Some of them I do, some of them I don't.

How else are they different?

Well, there has been a rise in people taking an interest in sort of social activism, people

becoming ecologically and ethically aware.

So, ecology is to do with nature, the environment.

If we are ecologically aware, we are conscious of the environment and make informed decisions

as consumers.

Ethically aware, to do with ethics, like a code of, you know, your own moral compass,

how you decide whether something is right or wrong, and how you impact on the world.

The Extinction Rebellion has been popular around the world - I'm not saying whether

it's right or wrong, but it has been popular mainly with young people.

How else have young people changed?

Well, it's difficult to give generalizations, and this video mainly is a generalization

about young people, but I think it's fair to say that people are becoming - well, certainly

men are becoming more family-orientated.

Men have always got this right, we're only cottoning on a little bit late, but trying

to make sure that we're there for bath time and becoming more involved in family life.

Financially, however, the picture is not so rosy.

The first generation in recorded history that is going to be worse - there should be an

"of" here - worse "of" than the one preceding it.

So, typically, this generation, young generation, finding it hard to get onto the housing ladder

to buy that first home, particularly in capital cities where most of the young want to be

because of how expensive accommodation can be in those capital cities.

Priorities, well, people aren't looking for an hour-and-a-half commute each way, standing

like a sardine in a tin.

There's the Anglo-Saxon work ethic of work, work, work, work, work, although it's still

going to be there, and certainly USA has a really strong reputation for this, but millennials

generation Y are looking for more of a home-life balance, for a constructive and nice working

environment, a place where lighting has been chosen to make one feel relaxed, and they

would argue that productivity is going to be improved in such an environment.

So, companies such as Google have invested huge amounts of money in making sure that

their staff are working at their optimum, less of a hierarchy, more of an equal standing

with their fellow colleagues.

Emotional intelligence is being valued.

Workers are being encouraged not just to grin and bear it, i.e. if there's a problem you

just carry on, but people are being encouraged to talk about their problems, and we have

this whole rise in awareness about mental health issues.

So, the modern work force is becoming, or the modern workplace is becoming employee-centric,

so an employee is someone who works at a company, and "centric" means that it revolves around

that point.

So before, jobs revolved around the customer.

The customer was king.

Whatever the customer wanted, the customer got.

Now it's employee-centric, so the most important person is the employee, that they are protected,

they have their rights, etc.

And people are looking to do some teleworking with flexi-time, so trying to have a little

bit of time working from home or trying to have some sort of negotiation on when the

work is done.

Obviously, there are going to be those industries that this is just entirely impractical for.

For example, teaching, yeah?

The teachers, generally speaking at the moment, have to be in schools to deliver the lessons.

There are some that would say that in the future, students are going to be taught via

iPads at home, but that's a long way from being a reality at the moment, and I'm not

sure it would be any better.

So, we're going to move on now to look at a kind of conversation that Generation Y workers

are looking to have with their employers.

So, as I mentioned, this kind of conversation with an employer wouldn't be relevant for

all of you watching this video, but I've taught in businesses where they do offer flexi-time

and where employees are offered the option of working one day a week at home.

So, even if this isn't a relevant conversation for you to be having, there may still be some

interesting grammatical structures and things to look out for in the English.

Okay, so first of all, we are proposing to have a conversation about working arrangements

with the employer.

Is there any chance we could have a word about something today?

So, that is deliberately vague language, because if I say what I want straight away, they might

not want to talk about that, so the first thing you are looking to do is actually find

a place and a time to have a, you know, a serious conversation about this.

And then, when the actual meeting comes and you're asked to explain what it is that you're

looking to discuss, there's a couple of issues about my schedule that I wanted to discuss.

Schedule is quite a North American word.

We don't use it that often in British English.

We would probably say, well, I'm a teacher, I'm quite used to saying timetable, I'm not

quite sure what is used outside of that.

Continuing, I've just been thinking that it could work really well to have one day a week

working from home.

Working from home.

I have just been, so it's quite indirect with the tenses that are being used, yet it's not

saying I want this now, yet it's distancing the wanting by putting it in the past tense.

I've just been thinking that it could work really well to have one day a week working

from home.

Now, the reasons, my weekly meetings, so the meetings that happen every week, tend to be,

so we don't come across this word all that often, so if something tends to happen, then

that is the, kind of, the likelihood, what normally happens.

My meetings tend to be scheduled Monday through to Thursday, which means that I would be able

to do my normal work from home.

I would be able.

As you are aware, I have a difficult commute, using "commute" here as a noun, and I feel

that that time would be better spent, and you could continue doing some research or

some phone calls or whatever it is.

It looks, sort of, unnatural that we have two "that's" next to each other, but if we

look at what's being said, I feel that, what do you feel?

I feel that that time, so the time spent on the commute, could be better spent.

I'm not saying this is the "the" conversation that you have to have, I'm just throwing it

out there as an example.

So, we've gone through some ideas about, sort of, teleworking and the shift in, the paradigm

shift in how people want to experience things at work.

What do you think?

Are you someone who likes to work from home, or do you like knowing where you're going

to work, going to the same place each day?

Let's have a conversation about it in the comments below.

There's now the opportunity to do a quiz where you can test your understanding of what I've

been talking about, and if these kind of videos have been of interest to you, then do make

sure you're a subscriber to my channel, because there's loads of Business English videos on

there and coming on to the channel.

Thanks for watching, and stay safe in those coffee shops.

Bye.