Big boss is watching you

Working from home is increasing in popularity as a means of escaping from the drudgery from nine to five office life. Why work under the constant surveillance of your boss when you can work in front of the TV in your carpet slippers. Armed with all the office essentials - telephone, computer, e-mail and fax, many workers believe they can work as effectively as their colleagues in the office. Being able to work wherever you like: from a busy metropolis to a picture postcard village, and not having to endure the daily grind of commuting, make working from home an attractive option. If you so wish, you can even work on a canal boat, like one Midlands internet firm.

Empowered by the latest technology, today's office worker is a moving target. Globalisation and easy transportation have helped to make business on the move commonplace. Hours that were previously frittered away staring out the window of train are put to good use with the aid of a laptop computer and the mobile phone. The workplace has brought greater demands on the employee over the last thirty years, with the cut-off point between work and home life extending as workers feel obliged to put in more hours to meet tight deadlines and career objectives.

So what will become of the office of tomorrow? I believe it is likely that many could vanish into cyberspace becoming a new wave of virtual offices. To minimise office overheads in inner-city areas, companies will implement a work force made up of a network of home workers linked by an advanced communication and information system. A central processing computer would be controlled by the manager who sends out work schedules and oversees the activity of each employee.

As a successor to the Web Cam, a video screen would be created, as the need for more natural form of interaction than e-mail or telephone becomes greater. Capturing the mood and expressions of work colleagues, managers would have the ability to view several employees at once on their screen. Employees would be encouraged to feed any information that may be useful to fellow workers into the computer to make the company work more effectively. As the company's life blood, the computer would contain a record of all conversations and correspondence for future reference, with confidential information such as accounts in password protected areas. In the office of tomorrow, with daily life captured in microscopic detail, the case for sacking employees could be more clear cut.

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