IELTS Listening 8 - Section 4

Questions 31-35

Good afternoon, my name is Dr Charles Butt and I shall be giving you a series of lectures on productivity and work practices over the coming weeks. There will be ten lectures in the mornings as part of this course and, in addition, there will be three lectures in the evenings from six to eight which will be given by outside speakers.

I would like first to look at a recent report on life at work. The report shows that the average British worker takes less than half an hour for lunch, 27 minutes to be precise, and that sick leave is on the increase. The drop in the length of time spent on lunch was nine minutes when compared to last year, down from 36 minutes. According to the report, this is the first time that the average lunch break has fallen below half an hour.

As regards sick leave, you can see that the average figure is ten days per year, that's up by one day in 2002 compared to 2001. While physical illness was given as the most common reason for absence in the case of non-manual workers, stress was the most common cause of long-term absence. It's worth noting here that nine out of ten workers claim that stress is a problem in their organization and that eight out of ten bosses are feeling more stressed than ever before. I would just like to say here that we will be looking at the stress in work and study at a later date. And we will be looking particularly at ways of dealing with it in studying, particularly for exams. You can see from the calendar that Professor Appleyard will be giving a lecture on this topic the week after next.

The report also says that just below 50% of workers claim that they were taking less time off for holidays than they were entitled to. I am not sure that this will be believed by the employers. Previous surveys have suggested that about one-third of days that have been taken by workers as days off sick were regarded by bosses as not being the result of genuine illness. Some more hard data is required to corroborate both these claims.

Questions 36-40

All this suggests that employers are driving their workers too hard. The effects of over-working mean that workers are now being stretched beyond their limits both physically and mentally. This is borne out by the increase in sick leave. However, looked at from the employers' point of view, the picture may not be the same. Employers say that workers protest too much, but bearing in mind the data about the number of bosses feeling much more stress than before, we need to think about this carefully. It's interesting to note that productivity has gone up in many areas of industry. In 2001, the local car plant had one of the sharpest increases in average productivity with the number of vehicles per employee rising by over 30% a year. A new assembly line came into operation at the beginning of 2002, affecting productivity which increased to the 100-vehicles-per-worker mark by the end of the year. This is a stunning achievement for an industry which was not long ago considered to be collapsing.

It would be interesting to do a survey of the work life at the plant. Those of you who have opted to do the project and reduce the number of essays you have to do may want to look into this. Please see me at the end of the lecture. Right now, let us move on ... .