CAE Proposal: Flexible Working Day - EngExam.info

CAE Proposal: Flexible Working Day

The company you work for is considering the idea of a flexible working day, where staff are able to vary their starting and finishing time. The manager of your department has asked you to write a proposal explaining why introducing a flexible working day could benefit both the company and its employees. You should also suggest how a flexible working day could operate in your own department.
Write your proposal.

Due to the introduction of a flexible working day being taken into consideration by the company, the following proposal illustrates the advantages of a job in which workers have the freedom and responsibility to organize their own starting and finishing working time as long as the total hours of work are not lessened (1).

Employees are engaged in fairly repetitive tasks, regardless of the department they work in.
Considering that the job itself would not be different if the working days were shifted, a flexible day could guarantee a considerable advantage, which (2) a lower level of stress through the adoption of a larger number of breaks. The more frequent breaks would be therefore compensated by less free days (3), because workers are more likely to sacrifice their weekends in exchange of a riduced (4) amount of working hours per day.

Of course the achiviement (5) of such a bold goal is not to underrate (6): in order to make it effective, it is necessary for every employee to be trustworthy and to get along with their collegues (7). Since a certain level of collaboration and mutual trust is already shared among the staff members in the marketing department (due to the nature of the job itself), the adoption of such project might reveal itself even more productive (8). In this department members have always been professional and efficient, and the management should look forward to an even bigger improvement.

In conclusion, a flexible working day could help to set the staff members free from stress and to organize a personal timetable according to their own needs, increasing thus their productivity. Creating a collaborative environment is fundamental to foster the suggested project.

The commentaries are marked in brackets with number (*). The numbered commentaries are found below. The part in italics is taken from the text, the word underlined is the suggested correction. Words in (brackets) are the suggested addition to the original phrase or sentence.

  1.  Consider breaking this long sentence into two or adding one more sentence. A one-sentence introduction might not sit well with the assessing party. Other than that it is a solid introductory paragraph
  2. a flexible day could guarantee a considerable advantage, which (is) a lower level of stress through the adoption of a larger number of breaks. — did you mean ‘which is …’? A more complex approach would be to use ‘namely’: “guarantee a considerable advantage, namely a lower level of stress”
  3. The more frequent breaks would be therefore compensated by less days off — I would advice using the term ‘days off’, especially considering your following addition that clearly implies that the days in question take place at the end of the week.
  4. Workers are more likely to sacrifice their weekends in exchange for a reduced amount of working hours per day. — ‘in exchange for’ is the expression you’re looking for. Additionally, note the spelling of ‘reduced’.
  5. Achievement — another tough to spell word.
  6. Of course the achievement of such a bold goal is not to be underrated —  a passive construction here would make more sense — it is the goal that shouldn’t be underrated/underestimated.
  7. Colleagues.
  8. Avoid using words like ‘itself’ twice in once sentence. Generally speaking, do not use words other than articles and prepositions twice close to each other (unless it can’t be helped.

First of all, I would like to point out that the concept of flexible working day pertains to freedom of choice when to start and end your work rather than the frequency and length of one’s breaks. See this article on flexible workday.

Other than that this CAE proposal is well-written with sufficiently-developed points, varied vocabulary and diverse grammar structures.