Working from Home can be said to be a fairly common situation in the current situation.
1. Vocab of Working from Home
- Flexibility: being able to change or be changed depending on circumstances
- Work-life balance: the time spent at your job in comparison to the time spent on your personal life
- Distraction: something that takes away your attention from something else
- Burnout: fatigue or tiredness from being overworked
- Sense of community: when members of a group have a feeling of belonging and that they matter to one another
- Colleagues: people you work with
- Camaraderie: the feeling of friendship and trust that people who work together or spend time together share
- Teamwork: when people work together to accomplish a goal
- Isolation: the feeling or state of being separated from others
- Productivity: how much you work you produce in relation to how much time you spend
- Workplace: any location where a person performs a job
- Work remotely or remote work: when an employee works from home rather than an office and uses the phone and/or computer to communication
- Telecommute: same as “remote work”
- Chained to a desk: when someone feels forced or obligated to work exclusively from their desk
- 9 to 5: the typical hours of work in many countries. Also can mean normal sometimes boring or mundane jobs.
- Carbon footprint: how much carbon dioxide someone/ somethings actions create
- Sustainability benefits: the results of protecting the environment through less waste and less pollution
- Environmentally friendly: describes things or activities that do not harm the environment
- Financially viable: describes something that allows companies to generate income, fulfill responsibilities and continue to grow
- Supervision: when someone manages a person or department to make sure rules are followed and work is done correctly
- Lockdown: when people are not allowed to leave an area as a security measure
- Hybrid work: work from both home and office
- Autonomy: when you make decisions for yourself without the control of others
2. IELTS Part 1: Working from Home
Q1. Do you prefer to work from home or at an office?
I most certainly prefer working from home. It gives me flexibility I would never have in an office environment. Plus, my work-life balance has never been better; I can get in a workout in the morning, pick my daughter up from school, plus I don’t have to spend time and money commuting to an office.
There may be some added distractions at home while I should be working but overall working from home has kept me from office burnout. To be honest, I found more distractions when I work from an office!
Q2. Why do you think some people prefer to work in an office?
Well, there are definitely benefits! For one, you develop a sense of community with your colleagues. There is the banter, the camaraderie… even the gossip! You have an atmosphere of teamwork in a conventional work environment whereas working from home can really lead to isolation.
Q3. Do you think more people will work from home in the future?
The global pandemic forced many people to work from home – for some it was successful and for others less so. So I think that future trends will depend on what outcomes we see from the shift to wfh during COVID-19. IF institutions found it worked for them without a drop in productivity or an increase in costs then we may see the home as the workplace of the future.
