Vocabulary related to human resources like “work-life balance” and “second interview” is obviously important for Personnel Department staff. It is also vital for all other staff when they are dealing with the HR department, something which is increasingly automated and/ outsourced abroad and so likely to be done in English all around the world. This article gives advice on presenting and practicing the most useful human resources vocabulary.
What students need to know about HR vocabulary
Categories of words and phrases that are important for this topic include:
- stages of recruitment and of careers more generally (CV, references, retirement, etc)
- training and other staff development (workshop, compulsory training, mentoring, fast track, team building, etc)
- things related to staff welfare (maternity leave, overwork, etc)
- rewards/ benefits/ perks (commission, company car, etc)
How to present HR vocabulary
Perhaps because this topic is something that all employees come across, at least half of the content of most business English textbooks are related to HR in some way. It is also easy to find online articles, TED.com presentations, etc on HR topics like stress at work and internal candidates vs external candidates.
It’s generally best to start with some basic comprehension questions to make sure that students understand the context of the vocabulary, for example true/ false questions about what the HR expert recommends and doesn’t recommend. Before or after students discuss the issues raised, they should also look at the relevant HR vocabulary in more detail, with tasks like:
- putting collocations like “sick + pay” together from their memory, their vocabulary knowledge and logical connections between the words, then reading and/ or listening again to check
- classifying the key vocabulary as positive (“empowerment”) and negative (“discrimination”), perhaps firstly without the text, then checking looking at it in context to start checking their classifications
- classifying the vocab as things which are becoming more common (in their country, industry, etc) and things which are becoming less common
They could then brainstorm more HR vocabulary into the same categories and/ or classify a list of more HR vocabulary in the same way.
The practice activities near at the top of the next section can also be used at the presentation stage.
How to practise HR vocabulary
HR vocabulary ranking discussions
Students put lists of useful HR vocabulary into order by criteria such as:
- how important they are for employees
- how important they are for companies
- how easy they are to achieve
- how common they are
- how desirable they are
- how undesirable they are
To add useful functional language for the speaking activity, you could give them useful phrases for giving opinions, agreeing and disagreeing, and/ or comparing and contrasting.
HR stages discussion
Make a pack of cards with parts of someone’s career such as “go to a career fair” and “get their first promotion”, and ask students to put them in a typical order for their country, for their industry, for their company, etc. They can then compare with other students, compare with the teacher, compare with what is described in an article, etc.
This also works well for just the stages of getting a job, and is useful practise for language of describing steps in a process like “After that” and “When they is completed”.
Human resources problems and solutions speaking
Make a list of at least ten typical problems, each of which includes some HR vocabulary, like “Staff complain that they are micromanaged” and “There is tension between the permanent staff and temporary staff”, and ask students to discuss the best solutions. This can be done with them asking each other for advice and responding to it, or just discussing the best ideas together as they work their way through the list. They can then share one solution they agreed on with the class for everyone to respond to.
As an extension, students can discuss if they agree with solutions on a worksheet, preferably ones that have other HR vocabulary in like “Introduce positive discrimination/ affirmative action”. They could also make up their own problems with other HR vocabulary to discuss with their partner or another group.
HR opposites discussion
Make a list of at least 10 HR options pairs like “compulsory redundancies – voluntary redundancies”, and ask students to discuss the best of the two options. To add more discussion, this can be done as a roleplay debate where they have to start with opposite views, and then either try to convince their partner or try to reach a compromise position. You can then test them on their memory of the opposites.
For more realistic business speaking and to bring in more useful functional language, this and the problems and solutions activity above can be done as parts of roleplay meetings.
HR vocabulary truth or dare
Make a list of at least twenty HR vocabulary items that it should be possible to make personal questions with/ about, like “overtime” for “How much overtime do you do?” and “promotion" for “When do you think you’ll next have a promotion?”. One student chooses a word and asks a personal question made with that word or about that topic. After their partner answers, they choose if they want the same question back (truth) or want their partner to make another question from the same vocabulary (dare). After that question is answered, the second person can then do the same with their own choice of word or phrase.
The vocabulary can be chosen from a worksheet (perhaps by choosing a random number), or from a pack of cards.
HR vocabulary ask and tell
This is similar to the truth or dare game above, but in this game the person who made the question flips a coin to see if they can ask that question to someone else (heads) or if they have to answer their own question (tails, for “tell”). The next person then chooses different vocabulary, makes their own question, flips the coin, then either asks or answers the question.
HR vocabulary battles
Students choose a different job each and take turns using words and phrases from a list of HR vocabulary to say how the job they chose is better than the other person’s choice of job, e.g. saying “A doctor has lots of variety in their job. A sales clerk’s job is easy but can quickly become routine and tedious” if they chose “doctor” and their partner chose “sales clerk”.