A new study conducted by IDC and sponsored by Nortel has concluded that so-called hyperconnected workers account for 16 percent of global business users today and the percentage is set to grow to 40 percent within five years.

Kelly Kanellakis, strategy and operations leader for the chief of technology officer in Nortel said, “The number of people moving toward hyperconnectivity is growing substantially.”  He reckons that in a few years, over 40 percent of the people will be what Nortel considers “hyperconnected.”

The study examined the habits of 2,400 people in 17 countries. Respondents said that on average the each carry seven devices and used up to nine applications. While more workers in the IT and financial areas are hyperconnected the trend is evenly spread out among every industry.

While the US and China account for the highest average number of hyperconnected individuals, Canada and the United Arab Emirates had the lowest average number.

According to Kanellakis, the trend is largely the result of the newest wave of employees entering the workplace.

“Hyperconnectivity is not necessarily wanting to be connected all the time to your job or work; it’s wanting to be connected to your community. And your community can be a number of things. Sitting behind your desk, your community is your work. At home, your community is your family and neighborhood. If you’re skiing, then your community is skiers,” he said.

The desire of these users to stay constantly connected has led users to social networking sites like Facebook and other smaller segregated communities, kanellakis said.

“Everyone wants to keep communicating, and as we’ve been given more devices and applications, people use them. The more devices that are invented and come on the market the more people use them,”

He continued, “Their expectations are that they’re going to work the hours they are going to work, and they’ll have personal lives when they want to have personal lives,”

“More people are willing to connect to work in more places, but on the flip side, more people are doing their personal communication at work. We’re seeing a blending of work,” he said.

A recent report by InStat that looked at both the number of devices that people carry around and their weight found that the more people travel, the more devices they have.

“If you get into an airplane Sunday night and you’re not coming home until Thursday, you’re going to make yourself as comfortable as you can. Some people carry two laptops in addition to business cell phone, personal cell phone, Blackberry and the rest of that stuff,” said David Chamberlain, an Instat analyst.

Kanellakis, speaking about the hyperconnected, added, “In terms of the hours they connect and do their work, again, they are very different. We’re not enforcing on them they hours we need them to be productive. We are not saying, ‘At 9 a.m. you will start and at 5 p.m. you will stop.’ What we’re saying to them is, ‘Here’s a task you need to get done. At the end of this period you need to have this task completed. When you get it done is up to you.’ So now you can make the personal choice to drop of your kids at 9 and not start work until 9:30,” he continued.