Файл: focus on business english.pdf

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Companies, even in industries such as construction and engineering, where 

training costs were high, found that young people in the later years of their ap-
prenticeships were making ‘a high contribution relative to their wage costs’, said 
the task force. 

Honda had reported that it took two years to retrain someone trained by 

another car manufacturer. Apprentices by contrast ‘quickly understood their 
(Hondaj )company values and practices’. 

Apprenticeships were also a ‘cost- effective way of replacing an ageing 

workforce and ensuring the effective transfer of knowledge’, Xerox, the office 
equipment group, told the task force 

From the 

Financial Times

COMPREHENSION 

 
1. Answer these questions. 

1. Who is Mike Turner? 
2. How much does BAE expect to save by training apprentices? 
3. What three major advantages of recruiting apprentices are mentioned in 

the task-force report? 

4.How much did 

ВТ

save? 

5.When do apprentices make a productive contribution to a company? 
 6.Why does Honda like apprentices? 
7.What are the two main benefits of apprenticeships, according to Xerox? 
 

2. Match the words to form expressions from the article. 

1.

prime 

    a). 

life 

2.

corporate 

   b). 

shortage 

3.

working 

   c). 

value 

4.

skill 

    d). 

ladder 

5.

staff 

    e). 

turnover 

6.

company 

   f). 

example 

FOLLOW UP 

 
Discuss these questions. 

1. Do you think experience on the job is more important than qualifications? 
2. . Is it important for bank managers have a degree from a good university? 
 
 

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AUDIO SCRIPTS 

Unit 1 Employment 

1.1  

Well, what usually happens is that an employer will advertise a vacancy or 

new post – sometimes both inside and outside the company. Then, after they re-
ceive all the applications, they shortlist the candidates, choosing those who ap-
pear to meet their criteria. Next, they will assemble an interview panel and call 
the candidates to an interview. Some employers choose to check references at this 
stage to avoid delays later, while others wait until after the interview when they 
have chosen one of the candidates. Provided the panel are happy, the employer 
will make a job offer and the successful candidate starts work. Often they attend 
induction sessions or are given a mentor who helps to train new staff. 

1.2

 (I = Interviewer, SK = Dr Simon Kingston) 

I How do you identify and attract the best candidates for a particular job? 
SK Well, the most important thing for us at the beginning is to have clear 

and full briefing from our clients. So we spend a great deal of time talking to a 
range of people in the client organization. And then, according to the sort of job 
that we are seeking to fill, we will use three different sorts of method for identify-
ing candidates. One, the most obvious one, is advertisement in appropriate news-
papers or journals. The second is by asking for nominations from within our 
client organization of appropriate candidates. And the third, and most labour in-
tensive for us, is our own, original research. And that will be derived from our 
database, from talking to authoritative sources in the relevant market place, and 
then from beginning to map the business sector in which we think we are most 
likely to find good candidates. All three of those different methods of identifying 
candidates will cross-reference, and ideally we’d like to find candidates who’re 
sourced from each of the three areas. And sometimes, when we’re very fortunate, 
we will find an individual who comes referred from each of the three approaches.  

Unit 2 Quality 

 
2.1

 (I = Interviewer, MA = Mike Ashton) 

I How do you define quality in business? 
MA Delivering good quality is absolutely fundamentally important to any 

business. I believe the best way to define quality is to look very closely at cus-
tomers’ expectations and then to look at the ability of a business to meet or ex-
ceed those expectations, consistently.  

Customers generally place great trust in the ability of their favourite brands 

or companies to address their requirements dependably, whether it be a soup 
powder, a hotel room, or a massive conference facility. Our job in our business is 

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to make sure that our customers’ requirements are very clearly understood, and to 
ensure that at every stage in the guest’s journey through our hotels, we are able to 
address our guest’s needs smoothly, easily and efficiently.   

2.2 

(I = Interviewer, MA = Mike Ashton) 

I How should quality improvements be measured? 
MA Well, as a general guide, I’d say quality improvements should be meas-

ured consistently over a period of time, and very accurately, so that everybody 
believes in the reports and the figures that are circulated round an organisation. 
But in three specific ways, we at Hilton measure the quality of our performance. 
Every year we contact thousands of guests to understand just how satisfied they 
are with all the important areas in our business, whether it be the way they arrive 
and depart from a hotel, or the quality of their bedroom and the food that they eat. 
We contact all of our team members, the people who work for us around the 
world to understand how satisfied they are with the experience of working for 
Hilton, their career development, and the training they receive. And finally we 
look at how efficiently and consistently we deliver our own operational stan-
dards. So, if we for example say that no one should take longer than a couple of 
minutes in a queue to be checked in our hotel, are we delivering that consistently 
around the world? And we do that through mystery visits to all of our hotels. That 
gives us guest satisfaction, operational efficiency and the satisfaction of our team 
members, in all of our hotels around 

the world. 
 

2.3 

(I = Interviewer, MA = Mike Ashton) 

I Does high quality mean high cost? 
MA I guess it can do, but I think what’s more important is, is investment in 

high quality, something that will pay dividends to a company, will it help to build 
profitability? Certainly delivering good quality consistently is not something that 
can be done without any cost to an organisation. Investment in good people, in 
good training, in efficient practices and processes will always mean that there is 
investment required. However, it should also be at the heart of delivering what 
any organisations’ customers are looking for, and if they are satisfied, and if they 
keep coming back as a result, then what should follow, is healthy revenues, and 
even healthier profits, and that for me makes investment in quality something 
that’s very affordable, in fact it’s absolutely essential.   

Unit 3  Marketing Change 

 
3.1

 (I = Interviewer, RB = Richard Brown)   

I How does Cognos analyse the character of a business? 

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RB Understanding the character or personality of a business is important be-

cause it shapes and defines everything the organization does and can do. So we 
use a combination of four approaches. First, we study the tone and styleof the 
company’s communications. Second, we interview the company’s top executives 
in depth. Third, we conduct research, more broadly, across the company’s staff 
and its customers. And finally, we’ll analyse the company’s internal documents. 
That provides insight into how the business talks to itself. And when we’ve got 
that sort of input we can classify a business as one of sixteen distinct character 
types. And these handle aspects of change, innovation and relating to customers 
in very different ways. 

3.2 

(I = Interviewer, RB = Richard Brown) 

I Can you give an example of how a business changed its organization and 

why? 

RB Yeah. Many businesses try to change their organization – their culture – 

and they do that to be better able to compete and grow. But it’s a very hard thing 
to do. It’s often easier to change a business’s character by merging with or a 
competitor. A good example of this was the merger of Guinness and Grand Met-
ropolitan in 1998. This created a twenty-three-billion-pound company, Diageo, 
the world leader in spirits. The top team achieved a very substantial change in 
culture by being very clear at the outset that it was creating a new and different 
culture from the two companies that merged. And they did that by laying out a 
very clear vision. They were very specific about how the new business would be 
run. They laid out clear values and ways of working for staff and they backed this 
up with a huge investment in staff training. This created a completely new culture 
which has been hugely successful. 

3.3 

(I = Interviewer, RB = Richard Brown) 

I Are some types of business organisation always more successful thn others? 
RB Well, our research suggest that there are sixteen different types of orga-

nizational character, or culture. And no single type is consistently associated with 
business success or market leadership. Having said that, we o find that particular-
ly successful companies tend to be similar in three ways. First, they’re future 
oriented: they have a very clear sense of where they are headed. Second, they’re 
customer-driven: they invest huge time and energy in understanding and respond-
ing to their markets. And third, they’re value-driven. By that I mean that people 
inside the organization are very clear about the values that should guide their de-
cisions and behaviours – the principles by which the business is run. 

Unit 4 Careers 

 
4.1

 (I = Interviewer, SK = Dr Simon Kingston) 

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I What advice would you give to someone planning an ambitious business 

career? 

SK I think there isn’t one single pattern for success in a business career. But 

there are one or two things that are apparent and common themes in the careers of 
a lot of successful people. One of those is an honest understanding of the individ-
ual’s own strengths and weaknesses, and that allows them, I think, both to plan 
the sort of organisations in which they will work and which they are likely to 
succeed; but also, very importantly, allows them to react rapidly but appropriately 
to opportunities that are unplanned that present themselves. And I do think that’s 
something that distinguishes really successful people from those who are average 
in their professions. I do think one of the other characteristics that is apparent 
amongst very successful business leaders is a curiosity that even thirty years in 
the same sort of business doesn’t dilute or indeed destroy. At the very top of ma-
jor organisations, people like Sir John Browne, now Lord Browne, at BP, say has 
meant he has been engaged in a very similar sort of activity for the whole of his 
career – he demonstrates real interest in innovation and also an open-mindedness 
about the structure of the industry that he leads and how it ought to consider its 
role and indeed the very essence of what it does in the future. That ability to re-
main interested in the core essence of one’s business is, I think, something that 
distinguishes the successful. Many of the rest of us lesser mortals get bored very 
easily, or lose the ability to spot the interest and to sustain motivation and mo-
mentum on the strength of it.