TRENDS: Predicting the future is usually great fun, even if it’s a chancy business. After all, weren’t we all supposed to be flying around in our personal aeromobiles by now, while robots took care of the household chores?

That hasn’t stopped Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a prominent employee placement firm, from unveiling its Workplace Trends of the Future. Some are already well on their way to reality. Others — well, I’m still waiting to vacation at that fabulous resort on Mars. Here are some of Challenger’s predictions, along with my guesses as to how they’ll fare:

End of business travel: A combination of high airfares and better technology means business travel will become a thing of the past. This is already happening to some degree, as companies continually look for ways to reduce expenses. Many companies have cut business travel to the bare minimum, depending on video and Web-based conferencing. The International Air Transport Association reported that air passengers flying in first-class and business-class seats fell 3.9 percent in March — the largest monthly decline since 2003.

Still, there are times when there’s no substitute for some old-fashioned face time. Besides, how else is the CEO going to justify the company jet?

Bye-bye health benefits: Challenger predicts U.S. companies, desperate to shed burgeoning health-care costs, will join a movement to eliminate employer-paid health benefits and create a national, single-payer alternative.

No doubt companies want to get out of the health-care business, as the price of premiums rises. According to a report last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums for family health coverage have risen by 78 percent since 2001. Whether companies will rally around a sweeping solution such as a single-payer plan — single payer almost always meaning the government — is by no means as certain. Stay healthy — or else.

Say hi to Big Brother: Corporate wellness programs will be more widespread and sophisticated, Challenger says, and worker participation will be mandatory in more and more cases. Companies will take a harder line on unhealthy habits, particularly smoking. Once again, this one is all about the cost of health benefits. If companies are successful in shifting that burden to someone else, the wellness movement is likely to melt away like a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s in the hot sun. In the meantime, this prediction from Challenger raises some intriguing questions about how much control a company can have over the private habits of its employees. So far, the courts have mostly been siding with employers.

No more cubicle. Challenger predicts the much maligned cubicle will be replaced by “open community spaces” such as conference rooms and tables. Employees will work via laptop and move from space to space as needed. I don’t know about this one. It ignores a natural human need for privacy, plus a space to store documents, reference materials, staplers, pens and pictures of the kids spending your salary at Disney World. You can’t keep everything on the laptop.

Microsoft University: Challenger said companies are going to take job training into their own hands, creating degree programs to train future employees, with the course work precisely geared to corporate needs. So future students might have a degree in, say, Web design from Microsoft University. A good idea, but it doesn’t work with a temporary, mobile work force, which Challenger is also predicting. If a company is going to spend time and money in training, it will probably need to extract some form of commitment from an employee. Secondly, how transferable is the training going to be? Will Google recognize a degree from Microsoft?

Free agents: More of us are going to be guns for hire, says Challenger, as baby boomers adopt alternative careers in retirement and tech-savvy younger workers seek more control over their working lives. Companies will enjoy greater flexibility and save money by not maintaining an expensive full-time work force. Sounds good, but I suspect it only works for a percentage of the work force. One big problem remains: health care. If consultants, freelancers and contract employees are not getting it from their temporary employers, it’s got to come from somewhere. And while some people want more flexibility and control over their careers, there may be just as many who are looking for stability, particularly when they’re raising a family. As for the companies, they will still need a core of employees with experience and institutional memory. But it looks like that core will be shrinking.

WORKERS PAY: A survey by Working America, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, found that working women report they are working harder than ever, and have almost no free time. What they want most, though, is a raise.

A 10-percent raise topped affordable health care or childcare on the wish list of women in the survey. And although many of the women reported they would like more time with their families, and more time for themselves, if they could somehow get more available time they would most likely spend it working.

“Working women say they want more cash in their wallets, even more than other benefits, like health care. Unemployment is up, the credit crunch is squeezing people and gas prices are hitting record highs,” said Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum.

The poll reports data from an online survey conducted from May 7 to June 20 from 12,000 respondents. This is the sixth edition of the working women poll. For full survey results, go to www.workingamerica.org.

GOLD STAR: Newport-based Advanced Financial Services, a provider of home mortgages, ranked 19th on a list of the top 50 small and medium sized companies to work for in America, awarded by the Society for Human Resource Management. SHRM lauded the company for having “hung tough in rough times” for the mortgage business.

With about 290 employees, Advanced Financial Services made it onto the medium-sized half of the list.

Company president Kurt Noyce said the company believes in “an open book culture,” sharing as much information as possible about financial performance and upcoming decisions with the employees.

He said the company also encourages philanthropy, matching employee donations to the charity of their choice up to $2,500 a year. Spokesman Derek Lombard said that to celebrate its 25th anniversary, the company prepared food baskets and distributed them to the Salvation Army and homeless shelters in the Newport area.

Lombard said Advanced Financial Services also believes in recognizing its employees, with a breakfast twice a year to celebrate anniversaries with the company, and an award ceremony every month to recognize good work across the organization.

asmith@projo.com