Hi everyone and welcome back to Love English i'm Sabrah your British University English teacher,
today we're going to be looking at 25 professional English words, now these are some of the most
common professional english words that you'll hear in the workplace and work settings so it
will really give you that confidence that you know you can follow most conversations in the workplace
as let's face it working in english can be a challenge and you need to know these
really common terms that are passed around quickly in the workplace so let's get started
number one is projections and projections really means predictions so what you think
might happen in the future based on the current information you have or the current data so you
might hear well sales projections for the next six months are looking quite good or projections for
where we'll be in terms of reducing climate emissions are currently looking a little bit
bleak so it's it's the forecast predictions number two is the word perspective now you might in the
office be tempted to keep saying i think or my viewpoint or i guess instead of saying those words
why not use the word perspective you can say from my perspective or my perspective on this
is or one perspective could be and immediately you sound a little bit more professional and
formal so give it a try perspective number three this one in fact rhymes this one is objective
objective is a better way of saying goal or target and you'll hear it all the time in the workplace
so you might hear our objectives for this year are to increase brand awareness
to increase sales it's a word you hear a lot in the office instead of goals they talk about
objectives things they want to meet things they want to reach so it's a really good one to know
you could also start things by saying well my objective for holding this meeting is
things like that again it will immediately help you to sound that bit more professional
number four this is a slightly tricky one this is extrapolate an extrapolate really means to
try to take out certain data from information or from data you currently have to try to use that
to gain more of an understanding for what could happen in the future what might be true to use it
in the workplace in a beneficial way so you might say we could extrapolate the data from the last
case study on why people didn't buy our shampoo to really try to understand what went wrong there
with that product so you're taking out the data taking out that the most important information
to try to understand something in more depth number five this is one you will certainly hear
a lot this is to brainstorm now if you and your colleagues are having a problem understanding how
to solve a problem or what to do for this project then you might say okay let's brainstorm about it
and it's where everybody gets together usually with a big whiteboard and you write your ideas
down based on certain themes so you might think about ways we could make something work options
issues potential opportunities things like that often people brainstorm using a swot analysis
if you haven't heard of a swot analysis it's used a lot in business business and marketing it's
where you analyze something from the perspective of strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats
but brainstorming is something that happens in all workplaces around the world it's quite
a fun thing to do i do love having a good brainstorm number six is stance and this is
quite similar in a way to perspective it's why you stand on an issue whether you agree
disagree or whether you're neutral so you might say my stance on further staff redundancies
is that it will cause problems among the current staff they might feel more negative towards the
workplace we often say my stance on this is it's a very common phrase my stance on this is
so it's a nice one to know if you want to say for example where you stand on an issue so my stance
on this current project is that i don't think the dates are achievable right now for example
again just sounds a little bit more professional number seven a little bit more of an informal one
but one you'll hear a lot in the office this is the lowdown and it's like the latest or the news
so for example you might hear can i get the lowdown on what they said in the morning briefing
regarding who's going to be placed where in the next project cycle or what's the lowdown
on staff bonuses for this year number eight is to drill down now i think if you work in
tech firms or things like that you're really going to hear this a lot because you talk about
drilling down into the data and essentially it's where you go very deeply into the data
to try to gain extrapolate information from that which could be useful to drill is to go deep into
something like when people drill for oil they go down into the earth with big drills big machines
obviously here it just means to go deeply into something so to drill down this one is return
on investment roi and essentially return on investment means what did you gain back from
your investment how many sales how many leads some of this is not easy to measure because for example
some marketing initiatives some sales initiatives produce more brand exposure so produce more people
knowing about you and you can't always measure that but you can measure leads and sales so you
would calculate the return on investment so you would minus the amount of money that you spent
on the marketing from the profits it's used a lot in marketing roi number 10 is kpis key
performance indicators essentially every company needs to measure their success and key performance
indicators are units in which we measure the success of a company or a department or a team so
it'll be things like the amount of customers who returned satisfactory surveys um the amount of it
will basically be all different according to which team which department and the whole company as
well so these are set on every level so it could be things like um did you meet your objectives
sales happiness of staff there's all kinds of things which can be key performance indicators
but generally you'll be set these by your boss your kpis tell me in the comments guys do you use
this term at work kpis or do you use roi do tell me about that in the comments below number 11 is
ramifications ramifications and this means the consequences so when we talk about
the ramifications we often mean the slightly negative or unwelcome consequences of an action
so we might say well we've seen the ramifications of cutting staff's brakes they tend to get over
tired and take sick days or the ramifications of this could be significant instead of saying
consequences you can change it for ramifications or making staff redundancies now is bound to have
ramifications so if you're using consequences in a more negative way then you can change that
for ramifications number 12 is conversely and this is a personal favorite of mine
if i want to sound more professional in a meeting or in a work environment i will change the word
however or on the other hand to conversely so it's like saying england is a cold country
conversely india is a warm country but obviously in the workplace you're going to be saying more
professional things than that so you might want to say something like the offices on the 30th floor
are the best and the biggest conversely they're on the 30th floor so it's a long elevator trip
for example it's like however number 13 is to conduct something now in the workplace we tend
to use conduct overdue we tend to say conduct a survey conduct an interview conduct a case study
so it's a more professional formal way academic way as well of saying you're going to do something
so you might say who is going to conduct the interview today
or when are hr conducting the staff survey number 14 is case study or sample set
and a case study or a sample set is where a particular group is taken to study something
intensely so for example you might want to understand who is going to buy your shampoo and so
you could have a case study of women in their 30s and a case study of women in their 20s or a sample
set of each and give them the shampoo and then you would see what they what they said afterwards
and from that you'd be able to extrapolate lots of information from those case studies on whether
they like the shampoo whether they could afford it everything like that so it's like taking a little
group of people and studying something intensely within that so testing things out they're often
used a lot a lot in science so with developing a vaccine there'll be sample sets and case studies
but it's not only for people it can also be animals um it can be trees it can be the
natural world all kinds of things can be studied in this way number 15 is entail entail means
involved it's a synonym of involve so we could say what does this project entail instead of
what does this project involve sounds a little bit better or we might say this is a situation
that entails considerable risks or if you're introducing a project to staff you could say
this new project entails and then detail about the project so it's a nice easy one to use instead of
involve the next one is morale staff morale this is something you might hear talked about and
it means the feelings of the staff how happy are they what's the general feeling like in the office
for example in a place where um staff bonuses have all been cut for the year that might be slightly
lower morale for a while also in offices with lots of windows plants water coolers free coffee
morale will tend to be a little bit higher it's really the happiness the feeling of the staff
we also talk about this in the army we talk about it in a country the morale of the people
so how are they feeling at the moment what is the current kind of emotions like of the people
number 17 if you've ever taken ielts then you'll certainly have used this in your
task one this is to level off and basically it's used a lot in the workplace because when there has
been fluctuations so changes in statistics changes in sales figures things like that you might say
there's been fluctuation but then it levels off and this means it starts to become steady so you
might say sales have leveled off after a period of fluctuation so after a period of them going up
and down now they've leveled off which isn't a bad thing it's not an amazing thing but it certainly
means that at least you're staying steady number 18 is deep dive and this means to go deeply into
a topic very similar to drill down so we might say we're going to take a deep dive into the data or
into analytics to really understand why exactly the last product didn't sell amongst women in
their 20s so you're going to go deeply into it and really analyze the data or really analyze
the feedback from people anything like that to take a deep dive number 20 is regarding regarding
now this means with reference to or about this so if you want to introduce a topic you can say
the word regarding so you might say regarding the new ceo we're going to have a memo coming around
today about when he's going to introduce himself or please check your emails regarding the latest
regulations on coronavirus safety it's a nice easy one instead of saying about this or on this
subject you can say regarding number 21 this is a great one this is consensus the consensus is the
general opinion of a group so if you look at the word it comes from consent which means approval to
approve of so you could say the general consensus at head office is that we need to increase our
marketing budget for this year or based on the recent staff survey the general consensus
was that we still need to reduce our carbon footprint more as a workplace number 22 is arise
and this essentially means to happen or to come up or occur and so it's a nice synonym for any of
those that sounds a little bit more professional so in emails you could write something like do let
me know if any issues arise or we're having a new i.t system put in today so technical difficulties
are bound to arise or let me know what challenges arise anything like that but it definitely sounds
more professional number 23 is cut backs and this means reductions you might hear something
like unfortunately this year there's going to be cutbacks in terms of spending on staff events
so expect a more reduced christmas party and summer event something like this due to general
cutbacks in the company due to the coronavirus something like this so it means reductions
in staff or in budgets number 24 is turnover you'll hear this word a lot this means how much
money a company made annually without taking into consideration expenses and taxes so the costs and
taxes so it's their total income without taking away any of their expenses and costs so it's not
profit it's not the same as profit profit is of course what is made once you deduct costs expenses
taxes number 25 is a briefing if you hear this that there's going to be a briefing essentially
this is a meeting where you will be briefed about something you will be informed about something
and it's not really a meeting in that sense because you're more being told about something
and it's called a briefing because technically it should be brief but very often briefings are
not like this but you are told in summary about a new project about a new agenda about um issues
if you're in the military there is constant briefings about updates regarding all kinds
of things targets locations settings all kinds of things like that so a briefing essentially
it's an informative meeting okay everyone they were our 25 professional english words
do let me know if you use these or which ones i may have forgotten and try to use any of them
in a sentence below and i will try and check that for you good luck with your work everyone bye-bye