Employment: hot issues

1.

2. Employment: hot issues

1. Do all people have equal employment opportunities
today?
2. What are the most effective methods of motivation?
3. What are the major factors to consider when
choosing a job?
4. Does running your own business have more
advantages than being employed by a company?
• How can one maintain the right work-life balance?

3. Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders?

• https://ed.ted.com/lessons/sheryl-sandbergwhy-we-have-too-few-women-leaders#watch
Sheryl Sandberg · COO, Facebook
As the COO at the helm of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg juggles the tasks of monetizing the world’s largest social
networking site while keeping its users happy and engaged.

4. SHERYL SANDBERG Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders

So for any of us in this room today, let’s start out by admitting we’re lucky. We don’t live in the world our mothers
lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited. And if you’re in this room
today, most of us grew up in a world where we had basic civil rights, and amazingly, we still live in a world where
some women don’t have them. But all that aside1, we still have a problem, and it’s a real problem. And the
problem is this: Women are not making it to the top of any profession anywhere in the world. The numbers tell
the story quite clearly. 190 heads of state—nine are women. Of all the people in parliament in the world, 13
percent are women. In the corporate sector, women at the top, C-level jobs2, board seats—tops out at 15, 16
percent. The numbers have not moved since 2002 and are going in the wrong direction. And even in the nonprofit world, a world we sometimes think of as being led by more women, women at the top: 20 percent. We also
have another problem, which is that women face harder choices between professional success and personal
fulfillment. A recent study in the U.S. showed that, of married senior managers, two-thirds of the married men
had children and only one-third of the married women had children. [. . .] So the question is, how are we going to
fix this? How do we change these numbers at the top? How do we make this different? I want to start out by
saying, I talk about this—about keeping women in the workforce—because I really think that’s the answer. In the
high-income part of our workforce, in the people who end up at the top—Fortune 5003 CEO jobs, or the
equivalent in other industries—the problem, I am convinced, is that women are dropping out. Now people talk
about this a lot, and they talk about things like flextime4 and mentoring and programs companies should have to
train women. I want to talk about none of that today, even though that’s all really important. Today, I want to
focus on what we can do as individuals. What are the messages we need to tell ourselves? What are the messages
we tell the women who work with and for us? What are the messages we tell our daughters? Now, at the outset, I
want to be very clear that this speech comes with no judgments. I don’t have the right answer. I don’t even have it
for myself. I left San Francisco, where I live, on Monday, and I was getting on the plane for this conference. And my
daughter, who’s three, when I dropped her off at preschool, did that whole hugging-the-leg, crying, “Mommy,
don’t get on the plane” thing. This is hard. I feel guilty sometimes. I know no women, whether they’re at home or
whether they’re in the workforce, who don’t feel that sometimes. So I’m not saying that staying in the workforce is
the right thing for everyone. My talk today is about what the messages are if you do want to stay in the workforce,
and I think there are three. One, sit at the table. Two, make your partner5 a real partner. And three, don’t leave
before you leave. [. . .] U

5. TRUE OR FALSE?

• All women in the world now have basic civil
rights.
• The speaker works for a website.
• 30% of people in parliament in the world
are women.
• The speaker has a daughter.
• The speaker believes women underestimate
their own abilities.
• The speaker believes that more pressure is
put on girls to achieve highly.
• The speaker argues that women shouldn’t
make decisions about their professional life
too early.

6. What makes us feel good at work?

• https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_what_makes_us_f
eel_good_about_our_work
About the speaker:
Dan Ariely · Behavioral economist
The dismal science of economics is not as firmly grounded
in actual behavior as was once supposed. In "Predictably
Irrational," Dan Ariely told us why.

7. Think: checking understanding

Why was the former student who came to see Dan Ariely depressed?
• A:His boss was unimpressed with the presentation he had worked so hard
on
• B: The merger and acquisition were canceled and he would no longer be
promoted
• C: His PowerPoint presentation was lost the night before he was supposed
to show it
• D: The presentation he had put so much effort into would go unwatched
What is the Sisyphic condition (also known as the Sisyphusian condition)?
A: The condition by which Sisyphus was finally freed from his torture
• B: A condition in experiments that test how workers achieve happiness
C: A condition in experiments that test how workers respond when the
meaning of their task is diminished
D:The act of diminishing financial compensation for a task in an experiment

8. Think: checking understanding

In the Sisyphic condition of the Legos experiment, what was the correlation
between the love of Legos and the amount of Bionicles people built?
• A:The people who loved Legos built more Bionicles because they gained more
internal joy from it
• B:The people who loved Legos less built less Bionicles because they got less
enjoyment from it
• C:The people who loved Legos less built more Bionicles because they saw the
task purely as work
• D:There was no correlation between the love of Legos and the amount of
Bionicles people built
In the second experiment, how did the subjects in the second condition (ignored)
respond?
• A:The ignored subjects responded similarly to the subjects in the acknowledged
condition
• B:The ignored subjects responded almost as badly as the subjects in the
shredder condition
• C:The ignored subjects responded at a point almost exactly in the middle of
those in the acknowledged and shredder conditions
• D:The ignored subjects began cheating as the experiment progressed

9. Think: checking understanding

In the origami experiment, what was the effect of eliminating the instructions for
some of the subjects?
• A:Evaluators were more likely to buy the origami made without instructions
because they were aware of the extra effort put into making them
• B:The subjects with instructions liked their origami more than those without
instructions because their results were less ugly
• C:The subjects without instructions grew jealous of those with instructions
completing the same task
• D:The subjects without instructions liked their origami even more than those
with instructions because of the extra effort they had put in

10. THINK

• What does mountain climbing suggest about human
behavior?
• According the group of engineers, what could the CEO
of the software company Dan Ariely visited have done to
make them less depressed about their project being
cancelled?
• What is the relationship between IKEA furniture and cake
mixes?
• What is Dan Ariely's comparison between Adam Smith
and Karl Marx? Do you agree that Adam Smith was
more correc

11. Vocabulary in Context

Choose the correct meaning of the words in bold.
1. Climbers make a huge effort, and put up with a lot of pain, to get to
the top of a mountain.
a find
b accept
c avoid
2. There are things in life that are more important than money: facing
challenges; feeling proud of what we do; having a sense of identity;
creating something,
a my appearance
b an ID card
c ‘who I am’
3. In my work, my motivation comes from helping people to learn a
useful skill.
a reason for working
b salary
c.problems

12. Vocabulary in Context

4. I
take pride in working with a team of talented editors and
designers and other writers.
a. have no experience of
b. have a hard time
c. get satisfaction from
5. It’s necessary for people to feel some kind of personal
connection with what they do.
a. worry about
b. interest in
c. ability to do

13. VOCABULARY Working life collocations (verb + noun)

Complete the text. Use the correct verbs. The first letter has been given.
Developing transferable skills
If you want to h__ a successful career, you may have to start by doing work for no pay.
An internship without pay is an opportunity to develop your ‘transferable’ skills. These
Include the ability to p__tasks, to d_____ with conflict and other difficult situations, and to
g ___ and p_____ information. Working, attending classes, and socializing with people
from other countries helps you to u______ and d__ with cultural differences. When you
a_____meetings and s_____ on the phone, then you
develop transferable communication skills that you’d need
to _____________almost any job. Completing a course
shows that you _____________ technology and know
how to use it.
And there’s one more transferable skill that should always
try to develop: the ability to ” h _____________ fun.

14. Speaking about Work

Ok Topic:
Describe your ideal job. You should say:
• what this job is
• whether you would need any qualifications
• whether it would be easy to find work
and say why you would enjoy this job in particular.
Unusual Topic:
Describe an occasion when you had to do something meaningless
Tell about
When and where you were
What you had to do
Why what you did wasn’t meaningful
How did you feel about this occasion?

15. Speaking about work

• What do you do ?
• I do a job-share with a friend in a boutique … I enjoy it … I like
working with customers … unfortunately it’s only temporary
work but one of the perks of the job is I get a discount on the
clothes …
Do you have any career plans yet?
Yes … I’d like to be my own boss one day … I’m
interested in programming and I’d like to create apps for
myself or for other companies … I know being self
employed would be a challenge but the idea of doing
a nine-to-five job doesn’t appeal to me at all …

16. Speaking about work

If there are a limited number of jobs available who should be
given priority, young people or older people with more
experience?
Things are so different these days … a few years ago older
employees would often take early retirement or go
onto part-time contracts and there were always
opportunities for younger people but now jobs are so
scarce … I think younger people need to be given the
chance whenever possible …
What are the advantages of having your own business rather
than working for someone else?
Well … unfortunately being an employee at the moment is very
stressful … people have very heavy workloads … they’re
always under pressure to meet deadlines … running your own
business isn’t easy … but I do think it would be far more
satisfying

17. Key vocabulary

• to be your own boss: to have your own business
• a dead-end job: a job with no promotional opportunities
• to do a job-share: to share the weekly hours of work with another
person
• a good team player: somebody who can work well with other
people
• full-time: the number of hours that people usually work in a
complete week
• a heavy workload: to have a lot of work to do
• a high-powered job: an important or powerful job
• holiday entitlement: the number of days holiday allowed
• job satisfaction: the feeling of enjoying a job
• manual work: work that requires physical activity
• a nine-to-five job: a normal job that consists of an 8 hour day
(approximately)

18. Grammar to speak about jobs

IF+
real condition: If I work ( Pr. Tense)hard I will finish my project
on
time
unreal condition( hypothising):
Were / was you/ the President/ the
head of my department,
I would (Pr T.)
had more money and free time ,
unreal condition ( regret)- no connection with now
If I had had ( Past Perf) more money last year, I would have
bought ( Perf infinitive)a new car.

19. Collocations with JOB/WORK/CAREER/BUSINESS

PROBLEM
Make sentences
Tell a story
solve
deal with
cause

20. More collocations

http://www.freecollocation.com/search?word=work
http://www.freecollocation.com/search?word=job
http://www.freecollocation.com/search?word=career
http://www.freecollocation.com/search?word=career