Office English / Calls and instant messages

Phone calls, video calls, even instant messages. There are so many ways to communicate at work.

Voicenote clipsI hardly ever use phone calls at work. They're almost always video calls. Yeah, I can't remember the last time I made an actual phone call.

It's really easy to just message someone at work or start a call online.

I might call somebody on the phone if there's something urgent, but I don't think I use phone calls at work as often as before.

Instant messages are very useful at work. We use them all the time.

In this episode of Office English, we're looking at the language of calls and texts at work.

Welcome to Office English from BBC Learning English, your podcast guide to the language of business. I'm Pippa.

And I'm Phil, and we're here to talk about the more difficult parts of speaking English at work. In episode one we were talking about emails, but there are loads of other ways that people communicate in the workplace today. What's your favourite, Pippa?

I think my favourite is actually a video call. I think it's so useful, now that lots of people work from home some of the time, to be able to have a video call and to talk with people, and it means that a meeting can be quite productive because you can prepare what you want to say in advance and you don't have the pressure of being in the room with people. I find that quite useful, actually. What about you, Phil?

I think I like instant messages because they're kind of immediate, they're kind of you can get a quick answer quite often, you can chat quite easily, you can look back and see what someone said. I think they're quite practical and they just... they just feel a lot freer than email.