Skilled migrants with English as an additional language (EAL) face poorer than average employment outcomes in Australia, despite possessing high level technical skills in areas of high demand. These outcomes have been widely attributed to migrants’ lack of work-ready English skills, although this has been assumed rather than evidenced. Only limited studies have investigated actual communication practices in linguistically diverse workplaces, and these have focused mainly on interactions between multilingual workers (Clyne, 1996; Canagarajah, 2017, 2018; Piller & Lising, 2014). As a result, little is known about the communicative demands migrants with EAL face when they enter English dominant workplaces, nor about the demands faced by existing workers who speak English as their only language in interactions with migrants from EAL backgrounds. Insights into these demands, as well as into how language practices change and develop over time, are urgently needed to elaborate understandings of integration processes, and to promote inclusive workplace practices.  This project addresses this gap by tracing interactional practices in a regional Australian workplace between one skilled migrant with EAL, and five local employees with English as their only language. Interactions were audio recorded daily over the skilled migrants’ first month of employment, and conversation analysis was conducted to examine changes over time in interactional behaviours of all participants. Results showed that, from the outset, the skilled migrant worker was able to engage a wider repertoire of interactional strategies and behaviours than local workers to negotiate shared understandings, build rapport and acquire technical expertise, despite encountering an unfamiliar accent, new vocabulary, and different social norms and expectations. Findings undermine a deficit view of migrant English,  raise questions about the appropriateness of English requirements for skilled migration, and highlight a need for resources to support the development of intercultural competencies among monolingual English speakers in Australian workplaces.