We've heard it said that work is not a place, but rather a thing we do. Admittedly, I've made the same comment but in reality, work is a place. The place just happens to move with us. We can now do it from anywhere.

The giant transformation lab we've lived in for the last 800+ days literally evolved every aspect of how we all live, work, play, and learn. For many of us, outside the pure chaos of the last two plus years, how we work changed very little. For example, working from anywhere at Cisco is something I've done for nearly twenty-three years. In government however, commuting to an office was the norm, prior to the pandemic.

You know we love our marketing and needed a name for the new way we work. So, what do we call this flexible, elastic, dynamic move to work from anywhere?Hybrid Work-but to be honest, it is my hope this label soon rides off into the sunset as we all settle into the new understanding that work can be done, literally, anywhere.

Cisco's Hybrid Work Index

The increased flexibility we now have to work from anywhere creates a much richer people-first experience. For example, sixty-four percent of those surveyed for Cisco's Hybrid Work Index stated workplace flexibility determines whether they stay or move on. Basically, with a hybrid work environment extraordinary people stay with you, and more extraordinary people want to come work with you. It really is that simple. This is also driven by positives like:

• Less commuting = less out-of-pocket expense
• Less commuting = better environment
• More time with family
• More time to actually get work done
• Extended time in cool places typically reserved for vacations.

To help us understand the changing dynamic of work specifically for government, Cisco partnered with Market Connections on a nationwide blind survey of public sector workers, from new employees to 20+ year veterans across all levels of responsibilities (view the Hybrid Work in Government Survey Report).

Those surveyed shared they currently work outside the office an average four days per week, with ninety-one percent satisfied with this new way of working. As we continue to return to the office, participants noted they will work from somewhere other than the office forty percent of the time, or two days per week, though most prefer three. And, with an average of three meetings per workday, each employee will attend six weekly meetings from outside the office.

Hybrid work in the public sector

It's safe to say that going forward, almost every meeting in a public sector organization will have one remote participant (and likely more). This raises the question: With our workforce coming in from anywhere and everywhere, how do we promote secure, productive, collaborative, inclusive meetings? In addition, there are several hurdles public sector organizations must consistently overcome when providing a hybrid work environment, including video/audio quality, accessing meetings, maintaining team collaboration (preventing out of sight, out of mind), poor home networking, balancing security requirements with seamless access, increased concern over security threats, and workers using non-managed devices.

There are also issues unique to specific types of governments. For example, federal workers in civilian agencies need FedRAMP compliant security, while Impact Levels are critical to the DoD, which requires intense levels of security with features that function flawlessly in battlefield conditions. And those in state and local governments need the capability to engage colleagues and citizens easily throughout the day while securely sharing significant amounts of data. Plus, they must be able to do so seamlessly and with complete security during emergencies, like natural disasters and mass events. All while they are blocking outside threats.

Delivering the same quality experience to your team members coming to work from outside the office IT environment is daunting. However, Cisco's hybrid work solution puts you in a position to deliver the flexible, inclusive, supportive, secure and managed solution employees expect. That's why we've focused our efforts on providing our partners in the public sector with:

• Secure accessbuilt around a zero trust approach and powered by Cisco SD-WAN for more efficient application access.
• Security resiliencebuilt on clientless multifactor authentication from Cisco DUO, backed by Cisco Secure Endpoint, Cisco Umbrella, and the world's largest commercial threat intelligence research team -Cisco Talos.
• A reimagined workplacevia Webex featuring end-to-end encryption, calling, messaging, and teamspaces with whiteboarding capabilities.
• Enhanced visibility and analyticsleveraging Webex Control Hub, Cisco ThousandEyes, Cisco DNA and more for amazing people insights.

Hybrid work, or better said, working from anywhere, is here to stay and Cisco is leading the industry in making your experience second to none, breathing life into our belief that Cisco makes hybrid work, work!

I invite you to learn more about hybrid work:

• Hybrid Work in Government Survey Report
• Cisco's Hybrid Work Index
• Hybrid work that works for all
• How to make hybrid work, work for you

Learn more about Cisco for government at:

• Cisco Solutions for Federal Government
• Cisco Solutions for State and Local Governments