25 Phrasal Verbs for Work, with Examples

Native speakers use phrasal verbs all the time at work. Instead of “postpone the meeting”, they say “put off the meeting”. Instead of “investigate the problem”, they say “look into it”. If you learn the most common ones, your English will sound much more natural, and you’ll understand your colleagues more easily.

Here are 25 of the most useful, grouped by situation.

Meetings

Phrasal verb	Meaning	Example
set up	arrange or organise	Can you set up a meeting with the design team for Friday?
bring up	mention a topic	I’d like to bring up the budget before we finish.
put off	postpone, move to later	We’ve put off the launch until next month.
call off	cancel	The client called off the meeting at the last minute.
go over	review or check carefully	Let’s go over the plan one more time.

Tasks and projects

Phrasal verb	Meaning	Example
take on	accept a job or responsibility	She took on two new projects this year.
carry out	do or complete (a task, plan, survey)	We carried out a survey of 500 customers.
come up with	think of (an idea or plan)	The team came up with a great name for the app.
hand in	submit (a report, form or work)	Please hand in your reports by Thursday.
fill in for	do someone’s job while they’re away	Can you fill in for Tom while he’s on holiday?
run out of	have no more of something	We’re running out of time, so let’s decide now.

Problems

Phrasal verb	Meaning	Example
look into	investigate	I’ll look into the problem and let you know.
sort out	solve or organise	Don’t worry, IT will sort out your laptop.
figure out	understand or find the answer	We need to figure out why sales dropped.
deal with	take action on a problem or person	He’s great at dealing with difficult customers.
work out	find a solution; calculate	We worked out a plan that suits everyone.
back up	support someone; copy files for safety	Thanks for backing me up in the meeting. / Always back up your files.

Emails and communication

Phrasal verb	Meaning	Example
get back to	reply to someone later	I’ll get back to you by the end of the day.
follow up (on)	contact again or continue with something	I’m writing to follow up on our call yesterday.
point out	tell someone something important	She pointed out a mistake in the contract.
catch up (with)	talk to get the latest news	Let’s catch up after lunch about the project.
keep up with	stay at the same level or speed	It’s hard to keep up with all these emails!

People and jobs

Phrasal verb	Meaning	Example
turn down	refuse (an offer or request)	He turned down the job because of the long hours.
step down	leave an important position	The CEO stepped down after ten years.
lay off	end people’s jobs because there isn’t enough work	The factory laid off 200 workers.

How to learn them

Don’t try to learn all 25 today. Choose five that are useful for your job, and:

1. Write your own example sentence about your real work.
2. Say each one out loud three times.
3. Use one in a real email or meeting this week.
4. Review them on day 3 and day 7. Here’s why that works.

Watch out for separable phrasal verbs. With many of them, the object can go in the middle: “set up a meeting” or “set a meeting up”. But if the object is a pronoun, it must go in the middle: “set it up”, not “set up it”.