Business Builder: Be Professional With the Passive Voice

Business English is not just a change in vocabulary and phrases, there are also grammatical skills that can help you to network, communicate, and move easily in the business world.

The passive voice is a way of describing an event without saying who is responsible for that event. This is a grammatical skill that can be extremely helpful when discussing problems in the workplace without upsetting colleagues.

Take this example:

1.       (Active voice) Chris broke the photocopier, so we need to allocate some of the budget to repair it.

2.       (Passive voice) The photocopier has been broken so some of the budget needs to be allocated to repair it.

Using the active voice, the focus of the sentence is on how Chris is responsible. This can be seen as blaming Chris and could start a difficult working environment between yourself and Chris. It looks unprofessional, and like you are interested more office disagreements than solving problems. The passive voice focusses on the issue and the solution. Chris is not mentioned, as who broke the photocopier is not important to you. This is much more professional, and will create less personal problems in the workplace. You will be seen as professional and solution focussed.

To build the passive voice begin the sentence with the object (photocopier) and then use “has been (verb)+past participle” (has been broken).

Keep things professional and solution focussed using the passive voice in your workplace.