So, what was the biggest financial ______ at the beginning?
At the time it seemed all our money was going on airfares and hotels, ________ it went on _______ and _______ a very old and very ___________ house in the village, and ________ it into a workshop and studio...

28.
And we've had almost ___________ of staff. That's important, ____ because of ______ or even the ___________, but because we have to work _____ ______ as a ____ and that takes ____ to develop.

29.
Is the US still your best customer?
Still a very good customer ______________ as big as they were. For the last year we've been doing ____________ well in Scandinavia and Japan, ______ as well as in Germany, which is now our ___________.

30.
But we may be reaching a point where we _____________________ and the ___________ of quality and that worries us. Ted thinks it would logical to expand but I don't want to if it means lowering our quality level. Anyway, that's a problem we'll have to _____________ in the next few months.

Supplementary Exercise Nine

1. Spot dictation:
23.
Well, social changes have been a major factor. More women are now returning to work after having children, for example. And, _______________, we've had to _________ changing _______________. With customers now preferring to do their business to the phone, we need our staff to work more flexible hours. We also __________ two smaller companies recently. So we wanted a common _______ that unite all our new employees.

24.
That's right. But that ______ the main benefit. We see the scheme as ________ a tool for _________ potential staff to our company especially __________ graduates.

25.
Speaking of your staff, what's the main attraction for them?
Well, the ___________ of people in the scheme want to spend more time improving their _______________ by doing an MBA or something like that.
I _____ the scheme must make it much easier for staff to look after their children too.
Yes, that is an ______ benefit, ____ is being able to dedicate more time to their outside interests, such as sports.

26.
That's right. There was an old scheme but awareness of it was very low. Most men, for example, assumed it was only available to women, which, of course, ________. The new scheme will _____ _________ offer alternative working patterns to staff on both short and long-term contracts. _____ this time, we're making it available to employees _____________ of the organization and not _____ people in more junior positions.

27.
It's difficult to say at the moment but, yes, flexitime is likely to be popular. _______, ______, with the old scheme, employees showed most interest in having longer _____________, and I expect _________ this time. There _______ some interest in, say, job share arrangements in the future. But we'll have to _________.

28.
Well, we have facilities but they're ____ that widely used at the moment. As most of our teleworkers have _______ to the company network, they tend to communicate _____________. It's far more convenient than telephoning because you don't have to worry about whether the person's available or not.

29.
That's interesting. But what about your managers, what challenges do

they face working from home?
Well, several have mentioned the need to be self-disciplined, differentiating between work time and private time. But the _______ difficulty seems to be _________ others to act for you, especially when they're in the office and you are not.
That's surprising. I __________ the most difficult thing would be staying ________ without the support of colleagues.
Well, that's ____ something that's come up so far but I'm sure it will.

30.
To discuss whether the home environment is suitable, you mean?
Well, it's not quite as simple as that. The main reason we have the interview is to _________ whether the applicant's ______ are __________ with working from home.