Polish course for office, IT and shared-service teams – team, emails, HR

For IT teams, service centres and offices

The course is for foreigners who work in shared service centres (SSC, BPO), IT companies and offices where the language of the project is English, but the language of the kitchen, the corridor and HR is Polish. It is one of our Polish at work courses.

• developers, testers, administrators and analysts,
• customer service, finance, accounting and HR specialists in service centres,
• office administration and reception staff,
• people who are planning a promotion and need contact with Polish clients or departments.

If you run negotiations, presentations and meetings with clients, choose business Polish instead – this course focuses on a team's everyday work.

Workplace situations we practise

We practise the situations in which you switch to English today even though the conversation could be held in Polish – and those in which English is not enough.

The course programme in modules

The programme starts with relationships in the team, because that is where you will see the effect of your learning fastest – your colleagues will start speaking Polish to you.

1. Team and office. Introducing yourself and describing your role, small talk, “ty” or “pan/pani” in a Polish company, names of departments and positions.
2. Stand-ups and meetings. The past and future tenses, aspect (robiłem – zrobiłem – zrobię), arranging and rescheduling meetings, asking for clarification.
3. Email and chat. Greetings and sign-offs, formal and informal tone, requests and reminders, short chat messages. You will find templates in our guide to the formal letter and email.
4. Tasks, deadlines and problems. Priorities, deadlines (na kiedy?, do piątku), reporting bugs and helpdesk tickets.
5. Phone and client. Phone conversations, passing a matter on, a calm reply to a complaint.
6. HR matters. Leave, remote work, sick leave, benefits, the periodic review, talking to the payroll department.

We have collected the vocabulary for the modules, including corporate abbreviations and loanwords, in the office and IT glossary.

Aspect and politeness – the most common office mistakes

In the office the most common mistakes are in polite forms and aspect – both affect how you sound to your Polish colleagues.

Starting level

You start the course at level A1 and work up to B1 – in the trial lesson we will check whether you start with module 1 or higher.

• You are starting from zero – first small talk, numbers, hours and simple messages. You can also start with the from-scratch course.
• You understand conversations but answer in English – we start with stand-ups and chat to break the speaking barrier.
• You speak freely – we work on emails to clients, phone calls and the periodic review.

Bring your own examples

You can start with the test or straight away with a trial lesson in which you tell us about your work.

1. Take the placement test or book a trial lesson with a level assessment.
2. Prepare examples: a message that gave you trouble, or a sentence you were missing in a meeting.
3. Choose one-to-one lessons or a group of up to 5 people.