How would your boss react if you created and posted to the internet a video spoof of your office?

Let's say the video portrayed colleagues as egomaniacs, including an office-supply thief and a Blackberry addict? And it described your office as moving from your company tagline - "clever, fast, witty" - all the way to "tragic, despondent, bipolar" and back again?

Fortunately for Wilson Cleveland, associate vice-president of Cubitt Jacobs & Prosek Communications in New York, his boss not only gave the green light for such a video - but she even appears in it. The almost 10-minute video is called CJP Behind the Magic and is posted for all the world to see on YouTube.com.

Cleveland and his colleagues created it last November in response to a query from the London office: what's a typical day like in the New York office?

Cleveland, who plays the role of the recovering BlackBerry addict, could have simply sent an e-mail. But, as he says: "I don't do anything small."

A growing number of employee-created videos - some sophisticated such as Cleveland's, others shot in a goofy way on handheld video devices - is showing up on websites such as YouTube.com, MySpace.com and Metacafe.com.

On Metacafe, you can see workers from offices around the world: rowing crew-style while seated in a line of rolling office chairs; shooting rubber bands; enacting a colleague's fake fall from an office chair; disco dancing behind their office friends.

Fun, yes. But fun can be in the eye of the beholder. Video scenarios can be embarrassing to the employer or to other employees. They can violate trade secrets. And they're potentially illegal.

Just when employers were getting a handle on workplace blogging - whether it's okay for employees to blog about the office and, if so, under what restrictions - companies are starting to call their lawyers about this latest online happening.

Matt Halpern, a partner in the New York office of workplace law firm Jackson Lewis, says he has started getting a call about this issue every two weeks or so.

It is telling that even as technology is allowing employers to monitor and regulate employee behaviour, it is also paving the way for workers to spoof - or even vilify - the boss or workplace.

Some employers have begun to add yet another layer to their employee policy manual with the dos and don'ts of camera and video use in the workplace.

But it is an issue few workplaces have come to grips with: an online survey in March of 424 US human resources professionals found that 65 per cent did not have policies on workplace use of mobile phones with multimedia capability. The survey found that only 7 per cent expected to have such a policy in place within six months.

Employees may want to take a lesson from the experience of Michael Hanscom. As a temp worker in Microsoft's Redmond, Washington copy shop, he spotted a stack of Apple computers on a Microsoft loading dock back in 2003, shot a picture and posted it to his personal blog. That brought a hurried end to his work at Microsoft.

A spokesman for Microsoft said the company did not comment on such matters.

Halpern adds that bosses may videotape an employee asleep on the job or engaged in other inappropriate conduct, but they should have the audio function switched off. Otherwise, he says, the boss may be in violation of laws regulating wiretapping, unless they have employees' permission to do such monitoring.

Employees, too, can violate that law if they remotely videotape colleagues in conversation without their knowledge, using the audio recording feature, he says. He also warns that they should be aware that if their creations hit the web, they could be subject to civil lawsuits from colleagues who don't appreciate the exposure.

Posting a photograph or video can trigger any number of employer policies, whether it involves accessing the internet, use of a company-owned mobile phone, blogging or posting a video to a blog, says Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute, an Ohio-based training and consultant company.

However, videos can have values that employers appreciate. Jennifer Prosek, managing partner in Cleveland's office, encourages the videos as a way to build team spirit and attract young workers.

Employees "always look for creative outlets", says Shiv Singh, director of enterprise solutions in the New York office of Avenue A/Razorfish, an interactive marketing firm.

Cleveland's employer sees the value of allowing employees some creative licence. Such videos can function as recruiting tools, team boosters or ways to distinguish a creative company from the competition, says Cleveland.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 36 million web users have already shared some sort of creative endeavour online - videos, photos, stories or visual artwork. Much of that is provided by people younger than 30.

It is essential to label the source of any content you post to the internet - be it office spoofs or strategic videos a company might create for clients, says Cleveland, of the CJP public relations company. "You do not want to dupe today's internet users. They'll bury you." Employers would be wise to recognise the value of such office video projects, he says. After all, "employees have a lot more power than they used to".

One arena where employee-generated videos can be used constructively is on the company's intranet, says Singh, who helps employers update the employee-only area of their sites. Influenced by their experiences with MySpace and Friendster.com, "employees are definitely starting to take greater ownership of the intranet", he says. "The next step will be creating videos."

And as long as no secrets are violated, no colleagues or customers are depicted offensively and other guidelines are followed, he says, "we encourage it".