Ethics

Discuss this list of unethical activities. In your opinion, which are the worst? Are any common in your country?

• avoiding paying taxes
• claiming extra expenses
• using work facilities for private purposes (eg. personal phone calls)
• accepting praise for someone else’s ideas or work
• selling a defective product (eg. a second-hand car)
• using your influence to get jobs for relatives (nepotism)
• ringing in sick when you are not ill
• taking extended lunch breaks
• giving good references to people you want to get rid of
• employing people without the correct paperwork

on Business Ethics

What is the purpose of business, in your opinion? Is it just to make money?

What do you understand by these phrases?

• business ethics
• a code of good practice
• a mission statement

Should mission statements include statements about ethics?

Entrepreneurs

To what extent do you think an entrepreneur’s personal qualities are as important as their ideas?

Who are the leading entrepreneurs in your country? Why have they been successful?

Retirement

Do you agree with the formal retirement age in your country? Why (not)? At what age would you expect to retire?

Do you think older employees should earn more, or less or the same as younger workers? Why (not)?

Older people

According to one forecast, by the year 2050, the number of people in the world aged over 60 will rise from 600m to 2bn. What do you think will be the implications of this trend in terms of employment?

Professional development

Read the article attached on the costs and benefits of training provided by employers. In your opinion, based on what you have read- what would be the arguments for and against companies spending money on training and professional development for their employees? Calculate the costs and benefits of training

Learning Business English

What do you think is the best way to learn business English? Look at it from your own perspective and take into the consideration the fact that many of you do not have real life work experience where you actually use English in work. How is your learning process different from that of a business man learning English for business at a language school?

FLSA

Do some internet research. What is the FLSA? What are employees’ rights on bathroom and meal breaks in the USA? Are they similar to those in your own (Germany) country? Search for the key words meal rest breaks to find out.

What annoys you most as a customer?

We didn’t get to hear everyone’s opinions on what annoys them most as a customer. Share your opinion and experiences here. On a different note, why do you think Germans/Austrians have a reputation for providing terrible service, ie. there is no customer service in Germany/Austria?

Golden rules of customer service

Try and brainstorm some rules for customer service. What do you think is important in customer service, both from the perspective of the customer and the perspective of the service / business provider?