BE 607: What Should You Put a Stop To at Work?

This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 607. What should you put a stop to at work? Welcome to the Business English Podcast from All Ears English. Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business.

For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is Real Business English with your favorite American hosts, Aubrey and Michelle, coming to you from Arizona and New York City, USA.

Michelle, do you get a lot of spam emails? Oh, yes. I get so many. And some of them I've probably joined a list at some point. So I'm constantly like unsubscribing just for like something I bought at some time and they've now added me to a list.

Right. Oh, my gosh. That happens all the time. Yeah. I mean, so you will just like kind of put stop. So if you need to put a stop to like these spam emails or marketing calls, probably, what do you do?

Yeah. That's one thing I do, right? If I'm going to try to put a stop to these emails, I'll unsubscribe to lists. That sometimes seems to help. But I get a lot of spam texts or calls that there's no way to put a stop to it, I feel like.

Even if I click stop or report it as spam or whatever, I don't know how they get around that. It seems like there's just no way to put a stop to that. Yeah, that's true. So, today we are going to discuss phrases to stop things from happening.

And this is a follow-up to the episode of Allers English, which was 2600, Grammar That Won't Keep You From Connecting in English. So we taught keep someone from verb plus ing. So that was what we were focusing on. And we also mentioned that we also say stop them from and put a stop to.

And we said we'd do another episode on those. So... Here we are. Yes. And we use those both a lot at work, right? So we are focusing more on how to use those in business English today, but you will also use this in daily conversations as well.

So be sure to hit follow right here on the business English podcast and also over on All Ears English. There gets so much great vocabulary on both of these podcasts that you can use both at work and in your daily conversations. So hit follow on both of our podcasts.

Awesome. All right. So yeah, Aubrey, this topic is good for business situations because sometimes you have to prevent or just stop bad things from happening, of course, right? So it can be avoiding or stopping almost anything negative.

What might this include, Aubrey? Yeah. Yeah, maybe like a miscommunication between coworkers or clients. If you become aware of some kind of miscommunication, you would want to put a stop to that.

You would want to make sure everyone understands what was misunderstood. Let's put a stop to this so that it doesn't get worse, right? Yeah, for sure. Or delays or security risks.

We have to put a stop to an alert for security that we got. I mean, it's always scary when you get those alerts like, oh, something may have been compromised. And that's happening more and more. I've been reading articles about how with AI, it's becoming so much easier for people to like hack and get everyone's password.

So we have to really make sure we have that. two-factor authentication, really strong passwords. It's just more and more important in this day and age, right?

We need to put a stop to how easy it is to hack everything. That's right, right. But yeah, it could be also avoiding or stopping sourcing issues or product mishaps or unhappy clients.

Yeah, this is interesting. There are so many things at work that could happen, maybe even unproductive behavior. If you have reports, someone that reports to you and something, all kinds of things can be unproductive. If someone either isn't accomplishing their tasks or if they're being extremely negative and critical, there are all kinds of things that can create an unproductive environment.

And if you are the supervisor of this person, you would need to do something to put a stop to it. Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about how to express this. So we can say stop them from and then add verb ing.

So this is used when you actively prevent a person or group from doing a specific action. So how might that sound, Aubrey? Yeah, for example... We need to stop employees from sharing passwords.

So as you can see, the direct object will often go between the verb and the preposition here. So we have stop employees from sharing passwords. And then whatever at the end is what we are stopping them from doing. Exactly.

Or here's another one. The manager stepped in to stop the team from missing the deadline. So stop the team from missing the deadline. Yeah. And this means to prevent it from happening, right?

If we stop something from happening, we're preventing it from happening. You might also say new security software helps stop hackers from accessing employee accounts. That's sort of what we were referring to, right? We want to stop that from happening.

We want to stop them from doing that. Exactly. Or we need clearer communication to stop clients from getting confused. Yes, exactly. So you can see there's so many things that might need to be prevented at work.

Needs to be stopped from happening. We use this phrasal verb to mean the same thing as prevent. And this is not too informal for work conversations. We say this a lot.

Right. Exactly. So when we use this phrase, it usually, it does a lot of things, but it focuses on preventing a specific action. And it's usually followed by a person or a group plus an action.

Exactly. We're saying either the person or the group that we're trying to prevent from a certain action. Then we're naming the action. We're naming what needs to be prevented.

Exactly. Exactly. It does sound very direct and practical. We often use it, like we were saying, for prevention before something can happen, which is so vital at work to be able to catch the things, to see things coming that we can prevent before they ever cause a problem in the first place.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right, Michelle, let's share another phrase. Like we said at the beginning, you can also say put a stop to something. So this is used when you want to end or prevent an activity or maybe behavior, a trend, an ongoing situation.

Let's share a few examples of this one. Okay. So the company is trying to put a stop to unnecessary meetings. That's good. Yeah. Exactly, right? If ever it can be an email, let it be an email.

Let's put a stop to unnecessary meetings. No one's got time for that. No. Or the CEO wants to put a stop to workplace gossip. Yes, this can be toxic, right?

This can be really destructive in a workplace. So often we're looking for those things that might be creating negativity or bad attitudes and we want to put a stop to it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or here's another one.

Creating penalties really put a stop to the late reports. Yeah, we both know as moms that having serious consequences for children's behavior can put a stop to the behavior, right? If there is no consequence, then children are like, I should do that again, obviously. Right.

That happens. Exactly. So but yeah, when we use this phrase, it focuses more on ending an ongoing situation or repeated behavior, right? Yeah, it often sounds slightly stronger or more formal than stop someone from doing something, right?

So for example, Michelle, if you're telling me about a problem at work, and I say you need to put a stop to that, it does sound more strong. strong, more intense, then you should stop them from doing that, right? It's interesting how the minor, the different prepositions we use do create this tone of seriousness.

Yeah. And also this is common in business or the news and also professional discussions. So this is really useful. This phrase can be followed by a noun.

So for example, the new policy put a stop to customer complaints. Exactly. We use it this way a lot, right? We're sharing how something ended. And instead of saying like, you know, it was ended by this, we don't really say that we'll say put a stop to we'll say what ended it, the new policy, and then put a stop to and then we share the noun of whatever it was that was ended.

Exactly. Yeah. Or so a phrase could also follow. So management wants to put a stop to employees using personal phones during meetings. Yeah. I could see that.

Yeah. This is interesting where it could stop with the noun, right? Management wants to put a stop to employees using personal phones. But here we have a full phrase because it's not just about using phones.

They can use phones at lunch and on breaks. Yeah. We're wanting to be more specific about when that needs to stop happening. So we have the whole phrase here, using personal phones during meetings.

Yeah. And if you use a verb after it, use the gerund. So verb plus ing. So management is trying to put a stop to overspending. Verb plus ing. Exactly.

So it's used there as a noun. This is a gerund is when we take a verb, we add ing, and now it's a noun. Yeah. Yeah. So anything you want to stop, stop overspending, stop criticizing, right?

We add that ING to make it a gerund. Or we're trying to put a stop to interrupting clients during calls. And again, it's a phrase because you could just say, put a stop to interrupting. But instead, we're adding that to a phrase, a gerund phrase here, interrupting clients during calls.

We want to be more specific about when the interrupting should not happen. Right. Yes, exactly. Oh, wow. So this has been really useful. So, Aubrey, would you like to put this all together in a role play?

Let's do it. You and I are co-workers discussing problems at work here. Uh-oh. I'll start us now. Oh, no, yeah, you go ahead. Okay. Did you hear they're changing the process to approve expenses?

Yeah. Apparently, they're trying to put a stop to overspending in a few departments. Honestly, that makes sense. Some teams are booking last minute flights every week.

I know. They also added new software to stop employees from submitting duplicate expenses. That should help a lot. Yeah. And those aren't the only changes.

They're also trying to put a stop to unnecessary meetings. Good. Half my calendar is meetings. That could have been simple email. Same here. I'm happy the manager is trying to stop everyone from wasting time.

Oh, yeah. This is good. Very common conversation to have at work, right? We're all trying to save time. We often all have the same frustrations. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. Exactly. So this is a good discussion here. So you said, yeah, apparently they're trying to put a stop to overspending in a few departments.

Exactly. So here we have that gerund, overspending, put a stop to verb plus ing, overspending. And then we're making it a phrase here because not overspending at all, though maybe that is the goal to stop it, but we're specifying overspending in a few departments. So not every department has this issue, just a few of them.

Yeah. Exactly. And then you said they also added new software to stop employees from submitting duplicate expenses. Yes. And this is such a great chunk.

It's nice. You have multiple ways to do this, right? Put a stop to something, stop, and then who needs to be stopped? Stop employees from, and then the action, what they're doing, stop them from submitting duplicate expenses.

Mm-hmm. And then I said, they're also trying to put a stop to unnecessary meetings. So here we have that other one, put a stop to, and then the noun, the thing that they're trying to stop action or a behavior.

Yep. And then here at the end, you said, I'm happy the manager is trying to stop everyone from wasting time. Exactly. And you've noticed with all of the examples we're giving, it can be a different pronoun, a different subject, right?

Stop them from, stop her from, stop everyone from. All depends about who you're talking about. It depends on who you're talking about. All right. What other episodes can we check out, Aubrey, that would be useful?

Yes, we mentioned All Ears English 2600. Don't miss that one. Grammar that won't keep you from connecting in English. That had other phrases that we used to do this.

Keep someone from doing something. Has a very similar meaning to this. Prevent them. Stop them from doing something. And then also right here on Business English, don't miss 561.

Do you make mistakes at work? Five adverbs to articulate what happened because we all make mistakes and you need to be able to connect about it in English. That's right. All right, Aubrey, should we put a stop to this episode?

I want to stop you from making it go longer, Michelle. Yes. All right, guys. Thanks for listening. And Aubrey, thanks for chatting with me today. Yes.

Awesome. We'll see you guys next time. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.

Want more from All Ears English? Don't miss our biggest and best podcast with 8 million monthly downloads. Just search for the All Ears English podcast and hit follow to get four new episodes per week on fluency, American culture, grammar, and so much more. Or tap the link in the show notes.

Remember, we believe in connection, not perfection when it comes to learning English. Follow the All Ears English podcast now.