Business English- Using Trends to Justify your Ideas

Justify your ideas with trends

Choose one thing your company could do from the list below and explain why it is a good idea due to changes in the population, the economy, customer profiles, competition, business conditions, tech, etc. Your partner will listen and ask for more details, agree or disagree with that idea, etc.

• A share buyback (= stock buyback)
• Accept a merger proposal – Reject another company’s proposal to merge
• Borrow more – Cut borrowing
• Bring back an old system/ product – Scrap a system/ product
• Change suppliers
• Combine two or more parts of the business – Split off part of the business
• Cut bonuses – Raise bonuses – Introduce more performance-related bonuses
• Cut office hours – Extend office hours
• Cut pay – Increase pay
• Cut spending on insurance – Get more insurance
• Cut the discounts that you offer – Give bigger discounts
• Cut the number of managers – Increase the number of managers
• Downsize – Hire more staff
• Expand – Consolidate
• Give more to charities – Give less to charities
• Hedge against…
• Hire consultants – Stop using consultants – Change the consultants that you use
• Increase your dividend – Decrease your dividend – Scrap your dividend
• Introduce (complete) flextime
• Invest more in IT/ technology/ training/ entertainment/ marketing/ R&D/ automation/ security – Keep larger (cash) reserves
• Launch new products – Update existing products
• List your company on the stock market
• Move into new areas of business – Specialise more
• Move office – Renovate this office
• New ways of marketing
• Offer early retirement – Try to keep older staff for longer
• Offer more benefits/ perks such as childcare facilities
• Outsource more
• Protect your company against takeovers
• Purchase a reserve of supplies
• Recruit a different way
• Recruit more MBA holders
• Recruit younger people – Recruit more experienced people
• Renovation of this room/ floor/ building
• Reorganise
• Replace an old product with a new one
• Sponsor a (different) sport
• Start up a new company
• Use head-hunters – Promote more from inside the company
• Use more agency staff/ freelance staff/ temp staff – Offer more permanent contracts

Use the trends on the next page to help with the task above.

Possible trends to talk about

• Absenteeism
• Average age
• Average wages
• Commodity prices (gold prices, crude oil prices, food prices, etc)
• Company image/ Public relations
• Competition (from abroad etc)
• (Business/ Consumer/ Market) confidence
• Consumer habits
• (Computer/ White collar) crime (e.g. insider trading and hacking)
• Economic growth (growth in GPD etc)
• Effects of globalisation
• Effects of the internet
• Exchange rates
• Health of employees
• Industrial action
• Inflation/ The cost of living
• Insurance costs
• (Bank/ Base/ Credit card) interest rates
• Life expectancy
• Market share
• New products
• Overtime
• People in higher education/ with postgraduate degrees (MBAs etc)
• Product lifecycles
• Product recalls
• (Pre-tax/ Net) profits
• Profit margins
• (Commercial/ Residential) property prices/ rents
• ROI (returns on investment)
• Revenue/ Turnover
• Risk
• Sales
• Shares (share prices, number of shares in your company owned by…, etc)
• Spending on…
• Staff motivation
• Staff turnover
• Standards of education in school/ university
• Stress
• Suing companies
• (Capital gains/ Corporate/ Income/ Sales) tax
• Tensions between management and workers
• Use of technology
• Women in the workplace/ Women in management/ Working mothers

Share your reasons for one idea on the first page above, and see if other groups agree with the idea and the justification. Then ask about anything you don’t understand above, working together to think of suitable ideas and justifications each time.