In the workplace of the future your boss could be watching your every move.

Working at home is increasingly popular as a means of escaping from the hard work in from-nine-to-five office life. Why work under the constant surveillance1 of your boss when you can work comfortably in front of the TV in your home? Armed with all the office basics —the telephone, computer, e-mail and fax, many workers believe they can work as effectively as their colleagues in the office. Work wherever you like: from a busy city to a beautiful village. If you wish, you can even work on a boat. 

So what will the office of tomorrow become? It is possible that many could disappear into cyberspace2 to become a new wave of virtual offices. To minimize the office in innercity areas, companies will apply 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.

A video screen would be created, as the need for more natural form of communication than e-mail or telephone becomes greater. Managers would have the ability to view several employees at once on their screens. 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 lifeblood, the computer would contain a record of all conversations and correspondence for future reference and hold secret information such as accounts in password protected areas.