Michelle: Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm
Michelle.
Neil: And I'm Neil.
Michelle: Thanks for joining me Neil. Have you got used to being back in the office after
that lovely long Christmas break?
Neil: Just about I think.
Michelle: It's always difficult coming back to work after a holiday, especially when the first
thing you have to do is spend the morning going through all the work emails that
have built up!
Neil: Yes indeed. Going through old work emails is a bore.
Michelle: Well today we're talking about a company that aims to ban, or to stop, all
internal emails in the workplace.
Neil: It's difficult to imagine office life without internal emails! But before we get on to
that, come on Michelle, it must be time for my first quiz question of the year?
Michelle: OK if you're ready. Today's question is about spam. That's the word for annoying
junk emails. Now we all hate getting spam, but according to a recent report,
which country produces the most spam? Is it:
a) India
b) The United States
c) China
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Neil: I really have no idea what the answer might be. So I'm going to guess, and for no
particular reason I'm going to say India.
Michelle: OK well we'll find out the answer at the end of the programme. Now, for many
office workers, sending and receiving emails to and from fellow employees is just
part of the job. But now a big IT company called Atos plans to ban all internal
emails by the year 2014.
Neil: Yes, the company has said that employees are wasting too much time dealing with
internal emails, and that this has become the natural, lazy way to communicate.
Michelle: Let's hear from Rob Price, a managing partner at Atos. Here he's speaking on
BBC 5 Live. First he says email has become the definitive thing people use,
meaning something that's fixed or determined. But how does he suggest people in
the office could communicate with each other instead?
Rob Price, managing partner of Atos
Email has become the definitive thing that people have used, they naturally use, they lazily use.
Why don't you walk across the office? Or, use Instant Messaging? Or, use a range of kind of
social media? So there's different things that people can do. This is about deciding what's the
most effective way of communication, and adopting and embedding those within the organisation.
(OK).
Michelle: So he suggested a couple of alternatives ways to communicate instead of using
emails. Did you catch them Neil?
Neil: Well first there was the good, old fashioned way of communication. Can you
imagine walking across the office to speak to someone?
Michelle: Amazing. That's always a good one isn't it?
Neil: And he also suggested using a range of social media like instant messaging.
Michelle: That's right. And he says that it's about deciding what is the most effective way of
communication and embedding, or implanting it within the organisation.
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Neil: So let's listen again to that clip once again.
Rob Price, managing partner of Atos
Email has become the definitive thing that people have used, they naturally use, they lazily use.
Why don't you walk across the office? Or, use Instant Messaging? Or, use a range of kind of
social media? So there's different things that people can do. This is about deciding what's the
most effective way of communication, and adopting and embedding those within the organisation.
(OK).
Michelle: So what do you think Neil? Do you think it's a good idea to get rid of work
emails altogether?
Neil: I think it's a good thing to try to do. I'm not sure if it could actually be eliminated
completely. But, you know, go and talk to people, it's better!
Michelle: I think so too. But of course internal emailing can be incredibly useful. And for
many employees, it would be difficult to work without it. Especially as emails can
be a good way of keeping records, or keeping evidence of things that happen.
Neil: That's true. But Rob Price from Atos has some more suggestions of the sort of
methods people can use for record-keeping instead of emails. Let's listen to this
rather fast list of ideas.
Rob Price, managing partner of Atos
Video conferencing, file sharing, live meetings, Wikis, collaborations, bases, knowledge
management systems, enterprise social systems. There's lots of different solutions and we need to
be cognisant of how those are used in the light of an organisation.
Michelle: Wow. A couple of things he mentioned there were video conferencing, file
sharing and bases – which is short for data bases. So he's got plenty of ideas for
the modern office!
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Neil: So Atos is hoping that by adopting some of these alternative types of
communication, employees will communicate better with each other and a lot of
time will be saved.
Michelle: Now time to go back to that quiz question Neil. I asked you which country
produces the most spam? The answers were:
a) India
b) The United States
c) China
And what was your answer?
Neil: I had no idea and had a complete guess at India.
Michelle: OK. Well according to a recent study by security firm Kaspersky, the answer was
indeed a) India. So there you go.
Neil: Well. Lucky me.
Michelle: OK so could you remind us of today's words please Neil?
Neil: Yes here they are:
to ban
internal emails
spam
definitive
embedding
to get rid of
keeping records
adopting
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Michelle: Thanks Neil. And that's all we've got time for in today's programme. But please do
join us again for more 6 Minute English at our web address
bbclearningenglish.com. Thanks for listening. Bye
Neil: Goodbye
