Ab initio German exam 2005 English passage

Many experts state that in future the world of work will be very different from what it is now. The arrival of the personal computer has made teleworking possible. This means that workers no longer have to go to their offices daily, but will be able to work from home. Teleworkers can read their email from home, and so communicate with colleagues and their boss by computer. They don’t lose valuable time commuting to work and they themselves determine when they work during the day.

Especially in Germany, where the school day still ends at midday, this will help women to have a job, when in the past they would have had to stay at home looking after their children.

The flexibility of teleworking is seen as its biggest advantage, but employers also find it attractive that the costs of running an office can be reduced and that cheaper jobs can be created. Some firms even believe that they don’t need an office at all: they exist only in ‘virtual’ form and distribute information about their work with the help of clever software.

While teleworking has been a great success in America in the last ten years or so, German employers are still sceptical. There are far fewer teleworking jobs in Germany than in the United States. Many Germans still believe that workers should be in an office and that they should have a boss who checks that they are there and are doing their work.