Hi students, hope you're well.
In today's business English vocabulary lesson,
I'm going to introduce some words to you which are about
returning to work, because things are changing now,
shifting and lots of employees have
been told they have to go back to working in the office.
So this vocabulary that you're going to learn today
is good for you to know if you're an advanced student,
but also because some of the words are going to come up,
are going to be talking points.
You're going to see them discussed in the news.
And perhaps you'll have conversations
about these things.
These changes, because with many of these things,
people don't really know the way it's going to go,
which is why I called the lesson back to normal?
Who knows?
So let's start with our first word.
These words here have been organized according
to influences coming in.
This is a very new word an acronym,
which stands for fear of returning to work.
So think of it this way.
If someone's been working at home, in the comfortable lounge
clothes all the time, suddenly they've
got to put on their old uniform, they've
got to wear a suit jacket again, they've
got to wear the office shoes.
It's a change.
All their habits are changing.
So they might be more anxious about going back to the office.
And they might also have safety anxieties about that.
If lots of people were going to be returning to the office,
then we will also have the return of the rush hour
commute.
The rush hour is a time when most people are on their way
to work or to school.
So the public transport is very, very crowded.
And if you've ever been on the tube in London,
you might stand on there like that squashed up
against other people.
So will the rush hour commute be returning.
We'll find out.
Here's another new word, which is
called reboarding This is to do with bringing back employees
who haven't been used to being in the office
or even working for a long time because they've been out
of work.
The word comes from reboarding a ship, going off a ship
and coming back onto it.
In the area of work though, it means
because the person has got out of the habit of working,
they might need extra support, potentially
retraining to readjust, to being able to work again.
Something that's coming back, or is it?: [is]
the office cubicle.
This is working in a small space where your desk is.
Perhaps there'll be a change in the way office space is used.
Perhaps there'll be fewer employees working.
And each one of those will be having more space.
We will see.
A word that's coming up a lot is flexible.
So you hear flexible working.
This means not going to the office 9:00 to 5:00,
Monday to Friday in the old way, flexible working means perhaps
two days in the office per week, or coming into the office
later than usual and leaving later
than the regular working hours.
Something that's coming in is the return of office banter.
This is non-work related playful conversation
with your colleagues.
This probably hasn't been happening that much
with remote working, people working from home because it's
not as spontaneous.
You would need to send that person a text message, a Whats
App message to engage in that kind of banter.
Whereas in the office, if you're sitting near people
it can be more spontaneous.
Although I will add a thought here.
It might also be the way out for banter
because one aspect of banter is that it can involve insults,
teasing, and making fun of people.
And there's a very blurry line between banter
and what's called discrimination and harassment.
And I think that whole area of work
is becoming much more charged or fraught.
And people are going to be more wary about being involved
in banter because it could get you into trouble or who knows.
In some cases, it could get you fired.
And one thing's for sure, an influence that
will be coming in is more health and safety,
more protocol about how you work around other people.
I'm sure there'll be lots of new rules and procedures, new ways
of doing things, which people are going to have to adapt to.
Let's talk about the influences on their way out.
We have another acronym here, work from home [WFH]..
So some people will be sad to see the end of work from home,
and other people can't wait to say goodbye.
Hot desking is when in an office,
you don't have a set place where you work from.
You can move around depending on where
you want to be on that day.
Perhaps that will not be looked on as favorably now.
People start to think it's a negative thing because you
think about hot desking, it's moving around and spreading
your germs essentially.
So we might see the end of that.
Here's one that I'm sure people won't
be sorry to see the end of, this is zoom fatigue.
This is having too many zoom meetings
so that it makes you feel tired or exhausted,
or having a bad zoom meeting where all you're doing
is just being spoken at and it's boring
and it makes you get a headache and you would rather
be anywhere else.
At the time of making this video,
it's not quite the end of this here in the UK.
This was a government scheme that if the business you worked
for, couldn't employ you during the pandemic,
they would pay most of your salary.
So this scheme, at some point will be coming to an end.
This is called furlough.
I hope you've enjoyed learning these new business
English vocabulary words.
If you have suggestions for other words
that are topical now to do with work and how it's changing,
you can leave them in the comments.
Thank you so much for watching this lesson.
I do have a course on business English vocabulary.
So I'll link it in the video description
and you could check that out if you
would like to learn more vocabulary with me.
Thank you for watching, and I hope to see you again
for one of my other videos.
Bye.