10 Common English Phrases You Hear at Work [488]

🚨 If you use English at work, these phrases matter.  These are the only English phrases I allow my private students to use at work, and the ones I tell them to stop using.  👉 Download the PDF (€9): https://www.englishlessonviaskype.com/workphrases-podcast

In this episode, you’ll learn common English phrases that are often used in workplace conversations.

You may hear expressions like touch base, bring something to the table, or hit the ground running — but what do they really mean? And when are they appropriate?

I explain the meaning behind these expressions and show how they are used in meetings, emails, and everyday professional discussions.

This lesson will help you understand workplace language more easily and use it with confidence when speaking English at work.

Ideal for intermediate and upper-intermediate learners who want clearer, more professional communication.

If you often hesitate, make mistakes, or feel unsure when speaking English, book a trial lesson. We assess your level, correct you clearly, and give you a focused plan so you know exactly what to improve.

Book a free trial here: https://www.englishlessonviaskype.com/trial

If you prefer to study on your own, explore our online courses. They give you structured lessons to build stronger grammar, clearer pronunciation, and more confident speaking step by step

Discover all courses and guides: https://englishlessonviaskype.com/confidence

Transcript

0:10

Hi there, this is Harry and welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language. Well today we're looking at business English and in fact we're looking at advanced business English concerning workplace jargon. Okay, these are typical phrases that you'll hear in the workplace. So advanced business English using workplace jargon. And again as always there are 10 of them so I'm going to go through the list one by one and then I'll give you those particular situations when you can use them. So some of them are quite strange in the way they sound but I'll give you the examples and situations and hopefully that will make it a lot clearer when you come to understand them yourself. And as you know the drill by now I'm going to go through them, give you particular situations, then you've got to practice them, see if you can just introduce one or two of them into your conversations, into your particular business English and you'll be amazed how quickly you'll get comfortable with them. Okay let's go. Drill down. Well we usually drill down some numbers. So if you're a number cruncher in an office, an accountant or if you're some form of analyst, then you'll need to drill down into the numbers from time to time. Your boss or supervisor or report line manager might ask you to drill down the numbers and give him some more detailed breakdowns. Okay, so for example, you might have given him a figure of the overheads of the business. So it might be 10,000 a month or 1,000 a month or whatever the figure happens to be, but he wants you to drill down and break that number out into some other little pieces so he can see exactly where the money is spent. Or indeed, somebody in the marketing department has got some numbers about how many people have landed on their web page, how long the people sit there and stay there and whatever they're looking for, they're trying to get some more information as to exactly how this social media works. So they ask you as the analyst, the IT analyst, to try and drill down into those numbers and get some more facts and figures that will make the analysis of this business even easier and better and quicker. Okay, so anything to do with sales projections, anything to do with new sales, marketing campaigns, overheads, really, really important to know what the numbers are. So you'll often be asked to drill down. Literally, if you had an electric drill, you drill down, you drill in to try and find out more information, drill down. To go the extra mile. Well, somebody asks us to go the extra mile, they want us to do a little bit more, okay? A little bit more than normal, a little bit more than average, a little bit more that will put the icing on the cake. Recently, I've been helping a lot of people who are planning and preparing for interviews with an airline. And one of the questions the airline really likes to ask them is, please give me a situation when you have gone the extra mile with a passenger or a customer that puts you in a good light, that made the customer have a really, really good experience. So to go the extra mile means to do that little bit more than expected, that little bit more than anybody else does. And when the person is on the receiving end of that type of service, they're really, really happy. So to go the extra mile. So if we're launching a new product into the market, we might have to go the extra mile to attract the customers. We'll have to spend a little bit more on the advertising campaign. We need to jazz up our proposal and presentation a bit and put a bit more life into it to go the extra mile. Do you work in English? Many people learn English from textbooks, but real everyday work English is different. I have written a short guide with the phrases I use with my students for meetings and emails and including the phrases I advise them not to use. The guide is only 9 Euro. The link is in the description. To give somebody or people a heads up. Well, when we give people a heads up, we notify them in advance of what might happen. So if you're launching a new product, you want to tell the whole team that it's going to happen from the 1st of October or the 1st of November. Or if something's going to happen where one client is going to really be writing in to complain about something, you want the management to know about it in advance. So yeah, you give them a heads up. You send a memo to your boss and you copy it to other people to say, bad news, this customer has put me on notice that he's going to close his account for XYZ reasons. So I'm giving you the heads up that when you get the letter, you're not going to be completely surprised or you get the phone call or the email, whatever way he has of communicating the fact that he's unhappy or that he's leaving. Or perhaps he's just trying to warn you that you might do something, go that extra mile to prevent him leaving it. Okay, so you give everybody the heads up, you notify them in advance. To keep somebody in the loop, well, a loop can be a circle. So if you want to keep somebody in the circle, you mean you want to keep them informed. So if somebody goes on holidays, for example, your boss goes on holidays, but he asks to be kept in the loop while he's away because he reads his emails. Well, that means if anything happens while he's out, you copy him or you CC him on the email. So he'll read it even when he's on holidays. Please keep me in the loop. You know how to handle this customer. You've dealt with him a long time. He trusts you. But just keep me in the loop. Keep me informed. Just in case I meet him socially or he calls me or emails me. I like to know what's happening. So please keep me in the loop. Keep me included in the circle of emails and correspondence. To bring something to the table. Well, you might ask, what does he bring to the table? So at a meeting, you don't literally mean to the table that you're sitting around, but you want to know what is this person going to do that somebody else cannot do. So perhaps your company or the board or the management are considering hiring an extra pair of hands, some specialist, some consultant. And somebody will ask the question, well, what is he bringing to the table? Meaning, what is he going to offer us? It seems to be very expensive. That's a huge price he's asking for. Are we sure he can deliver? So somebody will have to then justify the reason why we're going to invite X, Y or Z to the company in a consultancy role and pay this huge fee because we want to know exactly what he's bringing to the table. What is he going to introduce? What is he going to do for us that will make a difference that we haven't already done or already thought about? So to bring something to the table. To hit the ground running. Well, we often hear this expression when somebody gets hired. So we're hiring a new head of marketing, we're hiring a new graduate, we're hiring a new IT analyst, whatever the position is, one of the questions we might ask the person when we're interviewing them is, what experience do you have? How do you operate? Do you need a lot of training? So if somebody doesn't need a lot of training, they might reply and say, no, no, no, I know exactly what is required. I can hit the ground running. Means day one, you tell me what you want done, give me a little bit of direction and I'll get it delivered for you. So I will hit the ground running. You don't have to spend a lot of time training me. You don't have to spend a lot of time holding my hand. I'm not a new recruit. I've done this before. I know what's required. I just need some broad outline and yeah, I'll get the job done. I will certainly guarantee that I can hit the ground running. It means you can start immediately without any delay to hit the ground running. To think outside the box, a great expression. When people are asked to think outside the box, people want something a little bit different. They want something a little bit unusual. They want something outside the norm. Ah, we always do the same old campaign. We always have the same old advertising, the same advertisements. Don't you think they've got a little bit stale? Why don't we try and think outside the box, think about something different? After all, at the moment, it's all about social media. It's all about Facebook. It's all about Instagram. We should go to social media. We should have a campaign there. Do something a little different. So what we need is somebody to go away, think outside the box, and come back with some plan that really might sound a little bit crazy, but you know what? It's probably just what we're looking for. It's going to make all of the difference. So to think outside the box. And when you're looking at strategy for a business, you often have to think outside the box. Think about something a little bit unusual. The world doesn't happen in the same way every time. Yeah, things have moved on a bit. Things have changed. So we need to think outside the box. So we want as a few people that can think strategically, think outside the box. Touch base. Well, simply to touch base means to get in touch with somebody. So perhaps we're making a promise. Perhaps we've had a conversation with somebody. We haven't reached a conclusion. Indeed, there may be no conclusion to be reached. But we tell them, look, I'll touch base in a couple of days and see what progress has been made. So perhaps you're waiting to get the word whether that proposal has been successful. And the boss is asking, well, have we heard anything yet? It's been a few days. You say, no, no, nothing yet. But they told us it would probably take them about a week. They have to go through a few other proposals. But as soon as they know, they'll tell us. And as soon as I know, I'll tell you. So I'll touch base with you as soon as I hear. Or if I don't hear anything by the end of the week, I'll touch base with my contact in the other company and see is there a reason for the delay. Okay, so whenever I hear, you will hear. I will touch base. So touch base to get in touch with, to contact, send an email, a quick text message, whatever way you're used to communicating with people to touch base. And then bring somebody up to speed. So when we bring somebody up to speed, we bring them up to date with whatever has happened. So somebody's been on holidays, out sick for a prolonged period of time. We have a meeting on the Monday when they return. Say, look, I just thought I'd bring you up to speed with what has happened in your absence. So that's a very common way to use it. So they've been out sick for a few weeks. You took over the account. Everything is running smoothly. A few little pieces here and there, but you've been able to handle it. So when your colleague comes back, you sit down with him, say, okay, let me bring you up to speed. I had this meeting last week. The week before, we had two calls. The week before that, we got the order out as expected. So everything is okay. As far as I know, there are no complications. So you bring somebody up to speed. And it can be a face-to-face meeting, email, whatever way you communicate to bring somebody, a colleague, up to speed with what's been happening. Or at the regular meeting that you have with the boss, perhaps he likes a meeting where for 10 or 15 minutes, each member of the team brings him, the boss, up to speed with what's happening in every area. It's an easy way for him to find out. It's an easy way for him to be able to ask questions, look you in the eye and say, what's really happening? So you bring him up to speed. And then finally, to be on somebody's radar. Well, when you're on somebody's radar, good or bad, they're aware of you. They're aware that something's happening. Or I'm on his radar, okay? Yeah, he had a reason to complain about something last week. And wow, he really let rip. So I was really on the end of his tongue. So it wasn't so good. So yes, I think I'm on his radar. I have his attention. So that could be for bad reasons. But it could be that you get a phone call from one of your competitors through an agency and they want to talk to you about a potential job opportunity. So you're on the radar of your competition. They're looking out for a senior executive. They obviously have seen how you work. They've seen how the competition is doing and they'd like to talk to you with the possibility to develop that to get and offer you that particular position. So you are on their radar. It means you've come to their attention somehow and they've noticed you like a radar checking out airplanes in the sky. They've noticed you and they want to talk and perhaps offer you the job. Okay, so these are the particular jargon or the expressions that we commonly hear in business. Okay, so they're all business English expressions. They are advanced business English expressions, jargon that you will hear in any workplace. Okay, so let me go through them one more time. To drill down, to drill down, to go the extra mile, go the extra mile, to give people a heads up, to give people a heads up, keep somebody in the loop, keep somebody in the loop, bring something to the table, hit the ground running, think outside the box, touch bass, bring somebody up to speed, and then finally to be on somebody's radar, to be on somebody's radar. Okay, so all advanced English jargon. So try them, practice them. If you don't understand them still, come back to me and I'll give you some more examples. And for those of you and your friends or family who want one-to-one lessons, well, you know what to do. Just get in touch, www.englishlessonviaskype.com and you can apply for a free try lesson and we'll be very happy to hear from you and very happy to help you. Okay, as always, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. This is Harry saying goodbye and join me for the next lesson.