Technological threat to work-life balance exposed in Deloitte's Eye to the Future report

The line between work and life will become increasingly blurred as technology continues to advance, according to a new report that examines the future of the workplace, among other things.

The Eye to the Future report by professional services firm Deloitte forecasts that the number of employees with always-on, mobile, e-mail access will rise from the current millions to at least tens of millions by 2010.

This will mean "e-mail... will extend outside the office buildings and outside office hours into weekends, public holidays and increasingly into vacations".

However, there is hope for hard-pressed staff, the report concludes, saying staff could redress their work-life balance problems by accessing more entertainment at work.

"Indeed some media companies may deliberately target office workers as their audience," the report says.

The research also claims the key to future productivity will lie in the quality of a company's search engine.

"As the proportion of information created in digital format grows, encouraged by the steadily falling price in digital storage, the ability to search rapidly and efficiently across a range of file types is likely to become a fundamental challenge," the report says.