Speaker Four</p>Man: I used to work in a catering company, and was promoted to Catering Manager, but at first I just kept on messing around with the rest of my staff. My duties included doing the rounds when everyone else had left. One evening, one of my staff put several thousand pounds’ worth of frozen food in a fridge by mistake. I should have discovered this, but I didn’t, and the next day the food was ruined. When I told my boss, I treated it as a joke, and put the blame on the person who’d made the mistake. My boss made it clear that I was ultimately answerable for what my staff did, and if my attitude didn’t change I’d be out of a job. Needless to say, it did change, and quickly.
4 F; A4 V9 d6 l( hSpeaker Five
+ h! m* I* T8 u: C a: I7 Q) PWoman: I used to work in a PR agency, doing publicity for lots of celebrities, and we were always too busy to pool our knowledge. Eventually, I instituted a working lunch once a week, to swap the latest information. I’d realized that we needed something like that when I was publicizing one of our clients, and gave a journalist from a national newspaper the phone number of the person I thought was the client’s booking agent. What I didn’t know, but some of my colleagues did, was that the client had changed agents, so the wrong one then got hundreds of call. He was furious, so were our client and her new agent, and so was my boss. All I wanted was to hide away somewhere until it all blew over.
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Now listen to the recording again.% h' s+ R1 x& d" i6 w( ?
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$ L `0 G$ X, s. Z! TThat is the end of Part Two.0 M' D' j; z7 a
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Part Three. Questions 23 to 30.You will hear a discussion between two managers, Jane and Oliver, about recent changes within the company where they work.
. i$ N1 T; s; e) B0 A& F qFor each question, 23-30, mark one letter (A, B or C) for the correct answer.
# z9 z& \9 q0 fAfter you have listened once, replay the recording.
" M# m- _ e t0 `! ?# i9 R% i0 l0 ?You now have 45 seconds to read through the questions.
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Now listen, and mark A, B or C.! R1 B0 f2 w2 d
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Man: So Jane, the changes are certainly quite wide-ranging, aren’t they?9 \: G. O, ?3 Q/ D
Woman: Yes, Oliver, the skills audit, targets, suggestion scheme, training arrangements… the list seems endless…
( Q& g) Y* ]( q% IMan: I suppose different people will react differently – they won’t all see the benefits of the changes….. x9 n: I0 R4 j! g: I4 ]9 S
Woman: Sure – and for some people, they’ll feel their areas of responsibility are being taken over, become resentful, and the company must tread very carefully here… because it’s the tide of high turnover that they company is trying to stem with these measure. These days, it’s often service that’s the key to maintaining an edge… so what the company needs to avoid happening in the future in sales decreasing if clients stop feeling they’re getting that treatment from happy, motivated staff here…" n& Y( s9 F( H" \, r
Man: Mm… I guess it was Human Resources that pushed for the changes, then?* D9 }) j" I: L q% f1 z9 `
Woman: Well, they were consulted. Actually, they’re the kinds of ideas that you might have expected the team system might have generated – because they’re quite wide-ranging, not just focused on one aspect. So, I guess it’s quite surprising, in a way, that it was the leadership group which authored them… what’s good, I think, is the way they’ve spent quite an amount of time consulting with management at all levels, so they have a kind of hands-on feel.
2 I" g' M. g9 d) ZMan: So what will affect us first?
5 y6 B+ E, f9 ]' O5 L7 u, ]Woman: Well, the skills audit, though its real effects won’t be apparent for some time. I don’t know, I think that was a wasted opportunity, really… It was so thorough, too thorough in fact… I mean, they asked absolutely everyone about absolutely everything because they were so obsessed with wanting to be accurate, but the result is they’re just swamped with information… they didn’t need to be that in-depth…6 E7 Z' b5 M ~3 o5 S1 P" o0 U
Man: Uh-huh… So is it really these divisional targets that will have the first impact? |