IntroductionWorking life conditions have changed dramatically during the last few decades with a comprehensive impact on how daily work is organised in the workplace (Marklund & Harenstam, 2010; Lundberg & Cooper, 2011). This development highlights the question whether future challenges that influence workplaces could met more efficiently by using futures studies methodology in working life research. A workplace, in general terms, may defined as a place or physical location of work or employment where work is done, depending on the sector and the industry, and the nature of the core business activity. A broader definition captures aspects of modern working life such as knowledge workers, telework, flexible work arrangements and global networks. Therefore, a more suitable definition would that a workplace is an environment that enables work to done (de Kerchove & Pollack, 2010). Thus, a modern workplace may defined in terms of its physical, social and virtual aspects.Based on two recent research reports, the aim of this paper is to exemplify how workplaces of the future are studied in contemporary literature (Hakansta et al., 2009; Regus & JB Associates, 2009). aim is also to determine the main challenges for workplaces of the future caused by changing working life, and to compare whether the conclusions drawn in the two reports differ. first report is a Foresight study performed by European working life researchers in a project financed by the European Commission with the aim of establishing cooperation channels for research in the area of work-related innovations (Hakansta et al., 2009). report summarises findings from a two-day Foresight seminar future workplaces. second report focuses on business leaders' opinions workplaces of the future. study uses the Delphi method of interviewing experts and was conducted by Regus, a leading provider of workplace solutions, in collaboration with research consultants JB Associates (Regus & JB Associates, 2009). present paper starts with a short introduction into futures research. Thereafter the two reports on workplaces of the future are reviewed and discussed.Futures researchRegarding research into future, the main challenge is how to define the future. future, from the Latin futurus, is something that is about to be and that normally includes an expectation of advancement or progressive development occurring at a later time (Merriam-Webster, 1993). The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, and stressed that current populations and decision- makers have a huge impact on and responsibility for the state and development of the future (Roosevelt, 1963). One could also try to define the future by reasoning its essential characteristics (Heinonen, 2010); for instance, that the future evolves in front of us. Something that was said a second ago belongs to the past and something that is going to said in a second belongs to the future until it is expressed. As wide and endless as the sea, the future holds various possibilities and directions for development. But the sea is also deep, and only a few future possibilities reach the surface and become realised. Moreover, the future may visualised and anticipated by using futures research methodology (Glenn et al., 2009).People have always planned for their future, and in the early 1960s research methodology started to develop, and futures research was established as a research field of its own (Myrdal, 2008). Forecasts the future in contemporary literature are categorised in several ways. Bergman (2010) and colleagues present a typology based on whether the forecast makes truth claims and/or explanatory claims the future state of events. A combination of these two dimensions gives four specific types of forecasts: predictions (both truth claims and explanatory claims), prognoses (truth claims, but not explanatory claims), science fiction (explanatory claims, but not truth claims), and utopias or dystopias (neither truth claims nor explanatory claims). …