we have broken the back of work

[Vectra]

Hello,

Here is part of a story made up by one of my students:

- The Board weighed all pros and cons and came up with the decision to fire the Sales Manager and change the strategy to restore the company image. The newly appointed manager is a real whiz-kid in sales. I can`t say we have broken the back of work but the last auditing showed a slight rise in share prices.

I think the "we have broken the back of work" part needs some clarification.
Maybe "I can't say we have broken the back of work to restore our customers' trust/the company's image' will sound better?

Thank you for the time and help.

[Dozy]

To me, the general nature of the work referred to in "broken the back of the work" seems clear enough in context without further explanation. Of course, clarification along the lines you suggest is not wrong either.

"all the pros and cons" seems better (though it's not impossible without the article). Also: "whizz-kid" ... "broken the back of the work" ... "last audit".

"rise in share prices" sounds a bit like it's referring to the market in general; probably "rise in the share price" (i.e. this company's share price) would be better. However, it seems peculiar to me that an "audit" should have anything to do with revealing share price rises. An audit is an external examination of an organisation's accounts (to make sure everything is in order); the share price is something that is visible in the market.

[Vectra]

You are absolutely right about the " last audit showed a slight rise in share prices" part. I am not an economist, it is the student who is, but I do understand that an audit itself has nothing to do with share price rises. Maybe "the latest audit's results led to a slight rise in the company's share price" will improve the sentence?

[Dozy]

You probably know as much about this as I do, but I'm wondering how likely it is that the results of an audit would lead to a rise in a company's share price. The only scenario I can imagine is that everyone was thinking a company's published accounts were dodgy, thereby leading to a fall in the share price, but the shares bounced back after an audit revealed that they were in order.

[Vectra]

Same here.