As part of Social Science Week, the Economic and Social Research Council has questioned whether the future world of work will see revolutionary changes in employment, work relations and work-life balance.

Research indicated that self-employment does not look set to radically increase and satisfaction with work-life balance seems to have dropped during the last 10 years.

Only 20 per cent of men are satisfied with their working hours with 30 per cent working more than 50 hours a week. Only 26 per cent of women find their working hours satisfactory.

Forum Response: Economic and Social Research Council

Professor Peter Nolan, director of the ESRC's future of work programme, told ePolitix.com: "The character of work organisations, employment relations, management strategies and worker responses is indeed changing but research from around the world points to complexity and unevenness in the structure and relations of employment.

"Such research will provide policy-makers with some welcome and timely evidence with which to inform future policy initiatives."

Forum Response: Institute of Directors

Ruth Lea, head of the policy unit at the Institute of Directors, told ePolitix.com: "Everyone should be able to balance their work lives and home and family lives satisfactorily. British employers know this and are some of the most flexible in the world.

"But the work-life balance protagonists ignore this and run an anti-business agenda that seems hell-bent on demonising the workplace with a collection of urban myths that are gross distortions of the truth.

"Moreover, the work-life language is subliminally anti-business as it suggests that, somehow, the opposite of life' (good thing) is 'work' (bad thing)."