Topic 1.1.4 Presenting future plans
PRESENTING FUTURE PLANS
1.Some teams, departments or companies operate a bottom-up management approach where employees are involved in decision and policy making. Discuss these questions.
- Who proposes ideas for change and makes the decisions in your company?
- What role, if any, do employees play in helping implement change?
Read the context
FGR is a textiles company based in the UK. Due to fierce global competition, FGR’s management called in business consultants to see what changes could be made to help the company work more efficiently. Rachel and Imran are department leaders and have attended the consultants’ proposed changes to the other heads of department.
2.Listen to the presentation given by Rachel and Imran. Complete the missing information 1-5 in these notes.
3.Match the 10 sentence beginnings and endings to make expressions from the meeting. Then listen again and check your answers.
| KEY EXPRESSIONS | |
| Explaining future events | Referring to audience concerns |
| Over the next few weeks, we’ll be … | We’re well aware of your concerns regarding … |
| We plan to keep you informed about … | As you all know … |
| Starting from next month, we’ll be putting | We’d like to assure you that … |
| Our idea is to … | Many of you have asked about … |
| We’re proposing … | You may be wondering if … |
| Later this year we’ll be … | Call for action |
| Making predictions | It’s crucial to … |
| Decisions will definitely have to be made by … | We’re calling on you to be … |
| Hopefully, the new model will be in place by … | Giving more detail |
| We are fairly certain this will have been carried out by … | Let’s digress for a moment and look at this in more detail. |
| This is probably going to be (difficult to …). | Handing over to someone |
| I’d like to pass the next point over to … | |
| (John) will now deal with … | |
4.Work with a partner. Take turns to present situations 1-6 using an appropriate phrase. Each person should use a different phrase for each situation.
- Explain a future planned event, e.g. increase of staff numbers by 5%.
- Make an informed prediction about the financial status of your/a business area.
- Refer to your staff’s concerns that the company may close and reassure them.
- Indicate that you are going to expand on a point about a new flexitime system.
- Hand over the presentation about your department to a colleague from a different department.
- You’ve made a presentation about new, higher sales targets. Give your audience a ‘call for action’.
5.Choose one of the topics below and prepare a mini-presentation (two-minutes) about proposed changes. Include at least one phrase from each category in the Key expressions. The context doesn’t have to be true for your job or company.
- Your department
- Holiday procedure
- Use of the Internet in work time
- Overtime rules
- Your company’s product/service
- Working hours
6.Give your presentation to a partner. Your partner should listen and check which phrases you used from Key expressions.
Homework
Prepare a presentation on one of the other topics in 5. Try to use ideas from the Key Expressions box.