Sarah McGovern, director of corporate practice at public relations firm Edelman Hong Kong, said: 'Our own experience has been that IM definitely makes it quicker and easier to communicate with colleagues and clients.' She added that her company used IM extensively within its office, and to communicate with external clients and colleagues in other Asia-Pacific offices.

'Everyone in the office is on IM. Within my team, we use it every day to get quick updates, bounce ideas off each other and do follow-ups,' she said.

'Obviously, it is still nice to go and have a face-to-face chat with someone, but sometimes it is more practical to use IM, especially during a conference call when someone could be talking and, at the same time, getting relevant information for the call from a colleague through IM.'

IM is a communication tool that Generation Y employees are likely to have grown up with. 'If you look at the Gen Y people, this is all that they know. This is their common mode of communication. They feel more comfortable using such tools,' Ms Kwan said. 'Employers need to recognise IM as an important communication tool. If these people are using this tool to build bridges then it should be encouraged.'

Technology research company Gartner Group predicts that by the end of 2011, IM will have become the de facto tool for voice, video and text chat; and a whopping 95 per cent of employees in leading global organisations will be using it as their primary interface for real-time communication by 2013. Already, 59 per cent of people in the Asia-Pacific region use IM at work, according to market research firm Synovate.

'We think that the numbers are increasing because IM is more than a communication tool,' said Erik Johnson, regional general manager for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions.

There were functionalities built into IM that made it appealing, he explained. A big attraction of IM is presence technology, which allows a user to determine whether or not their contacts are available online, regardless of their location. 'The main advantage of IM versus the phone is that you can see who's online,' Ms McGovern said.

'With the phone or e-mail, you are not sure if someone is away at a meeting. If you can see a person's availability online, that guarantees instant response.'

Mr Johnson believes that the availability of additional features will be a major trend in IM. He said IM was a good collaborative tool with video chat and voice chat features, and the ability to send documents back and forth.

'There can be much more collaboration with IM and its easier to use than the telephone because of the presence feature. It is not synchronous like e-mail, but real-time,' Mr Johnson said.

According to Synovate, Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger (WLM) is the top IM service in the region. It has more than 280 million active accounts worldwide, sending more than eight billion messages a day.

'WLM is strong, specifically in the work environment with 62 per cent of WLM users signing in during work hours,' Mr Johnson said.

One of the key advantages of IM is the informal conversational style that it engenders compared with the e-mails which tend to be more formal.

'This is useful when you are trying to build relationships with colleagues and clients. Sometimes you just want to chat with someone,' Ms McGovern said.

And when it comes to issues of security, such as spam and viruses, there aren't that many that are as safe, according to Mr Johnson.

'We made a conscious decision when we were developing WLM to make the product as safe as possible. It has been built and designed to minimise risk,' he said. 'The bigger issue is how it gets used, and this is a broader issue that concerns the rest of the internet. When you are making contact with people online who you haven't met, how do you know who to trust? How do you establish trust?

'It's not a product to go and discover new people but rather one to communicate with those you already know. You are in control of how you want to use the technology.'

Ms McGovern said: 'I don't think people should be afraid of embracing IM in the workplace. It is an incredibly useful and successful tool.'