Table of Contents
BEST IELTS General Reading Test 106
GENERAL READING TEST 106 – PASSAGE – 2
GENERAL READING TEST – 106
READING PASSAGE – 2
Questions 15 – 20
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the text for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 15 – 20 on your answer sheet.
15. What kind of rotating shift schedules are best for minimising employees’ fatigue?
16. What is the maximum length of a night shift at the company?
17. What is the minimum age for doing night work at the company?
18. How long must the company retain records relating to night workers’ hours?
19. What kind of workers are not covered by the company night working rules?
20. Who were consulted when creating the health assessment questionnaire?
Notes for Employees Considering Night Time Working
Due to the nature of our business, it’s sometimes necessary that our staff work at night. Night shifts can be particularly demanding on employee wellbeing and health. This can include disruption to the body clock, fatigue, sleeping difficulties, disturbed appetite and digestion, reliance on sedatives or stimulants, social and domestic problems and other symptoms of ill health. To combat this, we do not have employees on night shifts for extended periods. This is because workers’ bodies will just have started to adapt to the new pattern.
We find rotation shifts every two to three days are best for workers and weekly or fortnightly rotations are the least comfortable for workers. Forward-rotating programs (moving from morning to afternoon to night shifts) are better than backward-rotating ones in terms of sleep loss and tiredness.
If someone works at night, there are rules covering the hours they work. Night time working hours are usually between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. – but this can be flexible and should be discussed between you and us. To qualify as night working, the night time period must be no more than 8 hours long and include the period between midnight and 5 a.m. Any of our staff under 18 years are not allowed to be night workers.
We must make sure that you don’t work more than an average of 8 hours in a 24-hour period. By law, you can’t opt out of this working limit. We must also keep records of any night workers’ working hours to prove they aren’t exceeding night working limits, and we must keep the records for at least 2 years. These records can be inspected by you at any time on request.
Our usual limits and regulations for night workers do not apply to self-employed workers. This does not include agency workers, who are treated as normal workers with us.
If you agree to working at night for us, the agreement will be put in writing.
If you are to begin working at night, we must perform a health assessment before you become a night worker and on a regular basis after that. Usually, this is just done with a questionnaire, which was created in collaboration with qualified health professionals. If there are any health questions regarding your health and night work, we will offer you a follow-up examination by a health professional if you still wish to work nights.
Questions 21 – 27
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text? In boxes 21 – 27 on your answer sheet write:
TRUE – if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE – if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN – if there is no information on this
21. For a lot of companies, backing up data should not be an expensive process.
22. Management should provide regular training on recommended back up practices.
23. Employees destroying data on purpose is unusual.
24. Responsibility for backing up data should be shared amongst all relevant staff members.
25. Backing up its material on a cloud system can save a company the time and money spent backing up things on other hardware.
26. Using best practice for back ups can usually keep back up material free from viruses.
27. Viruses usually infect company systems because of employees opening infected emails.
Advice on Backing up Data
Protecting your IT systems and business data is vitally important. Business information can be a valuable asset, and critical information such as financial data and customer records can be very difficult to replace. Loss of confidential or sensitive data can also have serious consequences. In most situations, small investments of time and money can achieve large improvements in information security. Often, security can be improved by simple common sense and good management practice.
The extensive use of computer systems makes business operations vulnerable to major problems, ranging from the accidental loss of data to deliberate sabotage by staff (though the latter is very rare). Storage systems, whether computer or paper-based, can also be at risk of theft or physical damage through a fire or flood.
A backup copy of your business data can allow you to continue trading, even if computer data has been lost. Backups can be made to portable media such as magnetic tapes, DVD-ROMs or external hard drives. Alternatively, online backup services allow you to back up your data over the Internet to the service provider’s data storage facility.
You should have a backup routine (typically daily) as part of your IT security policy and you should check that this is being correctly carried out.
Best practice for backing up data includes:
– giving one person the main duty for backing up, and designating a second to cover for absence – not relying solely on a cloud-based backup system for keeping your data safe.
– using a different tape, external hard drive or disk to back up each day of the week and having a schedule for rotating them – this can nearly always safeguard backups in the case of a virus attack.
– keeping backups secure – preferably off-site from the main business premises, e.g. in a bank box.
– periodically testing your backups to ensure that your data can be successfully restored.
Data backups are a key part of business continuity planning for IT systems.
ANSWERS ARE BELOW
ANSWERS
15. FORWARD (-ROTATING) (PROGRAMS)
16. 8 HOURS
17. 18 YEARS
18. 2 YEARS
19. SELF-EMPLOYED (WORKERS)
20. (QUALIFIED) HEALTH
PROFESSIONALS
21. TRUE
22. NOT GIVEN
23. TRUE
24. FALSE
25. FALSE
26. TRUE
27. NOT GIVEN