20 Office Expressions to Describe Your Workplace - Visual Vocabulary

Hi, I’m Katie. Welcome to Oxford Online  English! In this visual vocabulary lesson,  

you can learn words and phrases to talk  about offices and describe where you work.

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Let’s start by looking at  different types of offices. 

I work in an open plan office.  

It’s light and modern, but it can be quite noisy  sometimes, and it can be hard to focus on my work. 

My office has cubicles. It’s OK but sometimes  

I find it depressing that there are  no windows and I can’t see the sky.

Is your office open plan? Many modern offices are.  

‘Open plan’ means that everything is in one large  space, and there aren’t many separate rooms. 

Many open plan offices have cubicles. Large offices with many cubicles can be called  

‘cubicle farms’. This has a negative meaning.  If you describe your office as a cubicle farm,  

you’re probably suggesting that  it’s a boring place to work. 

I work for a start-up, and our office is nice but  

too small. It’s very cramped and there  aren’t enough desks, so we have to hot desk. 

‘Cramped’ is a useful adjective. It  means that you don’t have enough space.  

You can use it for many things. For  example, if your kitchen is very small  

and you can’t move around without hitting  things, then you could say it’s cramped.

What about ‘hot desk’? Do you know  what that means, or can you guess? 

Hot desking is a way to share a workspace. If  you hot desk, you don’t have your own desk.  

You share a desk with other workers, and you  just take any free desk when you get to work.

Hot desking might be used in companies where  people don’t all work at the same time. If  

employees work at different  hours, they can hot desk:  

as one person leaves, another person  can arrive and use the same workspace. 

After working here for a few years, I got a  promotion and was given my own personal office. 

In many buildings, having a corner office of your  own is considered the best location, because you  

have views on two sides. On the other hand,  the words ‘personal office’ just mean that you  

don’t share your office with anyone. A personal  office could also be a tiny room with no windows. 

Our company’s quite casual, so  people just wear what they want. 

My company has a strict dress code.  You have to dress smartly at all times. 

Does your office have a dress code? Do people in  your office dress more casually, or more smartly? 

You can say ‘dress smartly’ or ‘dress  formally’. The meaning is similar.

What else? Some workplaces might have a  smart casual dress code. ‘Smart casual’ is  

in the middle between formal and informal. For  example, for men, it might mean wearing a shirt  

and smart trousers, but not a tie or a full suit. We have a small meeting room in our office.  

Sometimes we have bigger meetings, and we  need to rent a larger space somewhere else. 

Many offices have a meeting room.  

What other rooms might you find in  an office? Can you think of three? 

Bigger offices might have a conference  room – like a meeting room, but larger.

You might have a copy room, for making  photocopies or printing documents.  

You might have a staff room or a break  room, for employees to eat and relax.

An office could have an IT room or a  server room, with computer equipment. 

We have a copy room with a photocopier  

and a heavy-duty printer. The copier tends  to break a lot, or the paper gets jammed. 

‘Heavy-duty’ describes something that can do  a large amount of work reliably. You can use  

it for other things, too. For example, if you  work in construction, you might need heavy-duty  

boots – tough boots that can protect your feet. Do you often have problems with printers or  

photocopiers at work? These machines are notorious  for being unreliable. A common problem is a paper  

jam – the paper gets stuck inside the machine,  and you have to open it up to try to get it out. 

Our office still relies on paper  records for many things, so everyone  

has to know how our filing system works. If your office still keeps paper records,  

you might use filing cabinets to keep files and records organised. 

Our company decided to go one hundred per cent  paperless recently, so all records are digital. 

On the other hand, many companies  are trying to use less paper,  

for environmental or budget reasons. If  your company doesn’t use paper for anything,  

you can say that you work in a paperless office. 

Our office has a lot of security.  Most internal doors are kept locked  

and you need a swipe card to open them. Cameras monitor all areas of the office.  

Staff don’t like it, because they feel  they’re being watched all the time. 

If your office has a lot of security  measures, like card-locked doors,  

CCTV cameras or security guards, then you  can say your company has *tight* security.

Another useful word is ‘surveillance’.  Many security measures, like cameras,  

might be used to track employees, and  see where they go and what they do.  

This is an example of surveillance – devices  or rules designed to monitor employees.

What about your office? Can you describe  your workplace? Put your description in the  

comments, and try to use some of the  language you’ve seen in this lesson.

That’s all. Thanks for watching!