The nature of work is changing and consequently we're witnessing a proliferation of workstyles that reflect new demands for flexibility, balance and autonomy. Organisations in all sectors confront the need to respond urgently to a bunch of demands that include the ability to work in less predictable patterns of time and location and to work in new and more complex patterns of collaboration and co-presence. 

Some days you need to work on your own, some days you need to work with a team of people who are all in the same physical space and the next day you need to work with team members who are all on different continents. On top of that, people are juggling professional ambition with personal commitments to family and community. Maintaining personal good health and looking after the health of the planet are dimensions of life that can't be conveniently forgotten or pushed to one side in the face of work demands and routines that are physically, emotionally and environmentally unsustainable.

So what are organisations going to do? 

My experience, fuelled by eight years' experience working with global networking and communications leader Cisco Systems, is that new rhythms of work are evolving, responding to these complex and sometimes contradictory demands, enabled and sometimes accelerated by new communication tools and information management capabilities. What is emerging is a simple challenge - making it easy and reliable for workers to stay connected to their work, to their colleagues and to their customers anytime, anywhere. Putting in place the platform and the tools, not to mention the culture and practices to make that outcome a reality, is much harder.

Cisco provides its employees with a rich mix of work tools and capabilities, all enabled by the network (not surprisingly!) that essentially means you can be as productive in the office, at home, in hotel rooms and airport lounges all around the world. People often work from home and it's rare not to be involved during any given working week with colleagues and team members in locations around the world. 

It's important to be clear what is driving all of this. It's partly about productivity and efficiency, about making it easy for employees to make their contribution to the organisation's mission at times and in patterns that, to a large extent, reflect a workstyle that fits the contours of their lives. Certainly for the so-called Generation Y workers, brought up swimming in a sea of connectedness and community, getting that mix right is an important attributes of organisations to which they are prepared to commit.

But it's also increasingly about working smarter to reduce the impact on the environment. When Cisco CEO John Chambers committed Cisco to work with the Clinton Global Initiative a couple of years ago, he launched an initiative in the company, "From carbon to collaboration", that would see dramatic reductions in Cisco's overall carbon footprint. 

As well, we initiated a program, Connected Urban Development, in which we have engaged with major cities around the world to explore the impact of networked ICTs on pollution reduction and lifting environmental standards. On top of that, Cisco is heavily involved in projects that are looking for ways to reduce the carbon footprint of Cisco's own operations - electricity usage, reduced travel and ‘green' data centre solutions.

If you step back and think a moment about what is going on here, I think we are in the middle of one of those fascinating periods in history when culture and technology have conspired to fuel dramatic shifts, a changing paradigm if you like, in many of the patterns of work and life with which we have become familiar.  What is emerging is a set of new workstyles that are rich with potential to secure the balance between work, family and community which seems to be so elusive.  

There are challenges of course - if you work in an environment that is ‘always on', how do you manage your time so that work doesn't end up taking up every waking hour (and a few sleeping hours as well!)?  How do organisations create the culture of trust and commitment that makes working from home and new patterns of team work and engagement not only manageable, but in many instances the most productive and efficient way to get the job done?  How do models of accountability and compensation reflect the fact that workers are often not seen and expected to operate a long away from anything resembling the patterns of supervision and ‘management' with which many older workers and managers are familiar.

For many, these new opportunities and demands press uncomfortably on widely accepted and entrenched notions of work and challenge all of us to adapt and respond. But without any hesitation, I am happy to claim that these are exciting times, full of potential and with an opportunity for new models of working that give us a fighting chance to secure the flexibility and sustainability we're, quite rightly, instinctively seeking.   

In his consulting work over the past 18 years, Martin Stewart-Weeks has specialised in strategy, policy analysis, facilitation and market and social research. At Cisco, as Director for IBSG's public sector practice in Asia-Pacific, he works at the senior executive and political level to help shape Internet business solutions and online strategies at both an agency and whole-of-government level. Martin has been a key member of the global team developing a new e-government framework, the ‘connected republic, for Cisco's public sector work.

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