Office English

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Office English / Extra work

Episode 260427/ 27 Apr 2026

4.3(28,913 ratings)·29,699 students

Transcript

Note: This is a transcript of a spoken conversation and is not a word-for-word script.

Phil

Do you go above and beyond at work?

Neil

I think you have to be careful that you don't end up spending a lot of your own free time working on something that you're not supposed to be working on, or that you're not, in fact, being paid for.

Becca

If it's something that you actually really enjoy, then I think it's totally OK to do things outside of your job description, so long as you're looking after yourself and you're not putting too much pressure on yourself to get it done. Because at the end of the day, you're not being paid for it.

Pippa

In today's episode of Office English, we're talking about doing work outside your job description.

Phil

Hello and welcome to Office English, your podcast guide to the world of work. I'm Phil.

Pippa

And I'm Pippa. On our website we have subtitles and a transcript so you can read along with this podcast, head to bbclearningenglish.com.

Phil

So Pippa, we're talking about what work you do and how much you do, and this can be a difficult subject at work. So let's start by looking at some common terms we hear when we talk about this.

Pippa

Yes. So we've got our job description. And that's what we're expected to do every day, day to day. So your usual tasks, your usual role, what is expected of you at work. Yeah.

Phil

We have this expression which we started the programme with today: going above and beyond. And that means putting in extra effort or extra hours on something that you're doing at work.

Pippa

Mhm. Yes. And then we also have this idea of taking initiative. And if you take initiative that means you do things without being asked to. And we'll talk later in the programme about whether you should take initiative at work or when you can. Um, and in this episode we'll discuss language and approaches to how much work you do.