Both the form and function of modern work are evolving at a rapid pace.

The pandemic's seismic effect on the labor market has been felt by virtually everyone. In the early days of the pandemic, a surge of workers lost their jobs. While the unemployment rate has thankfully come down from the April 2020 high of 14.8% to a more manageable 5.4% in July 2021, we aren't back to our pre-pandemic low of 3.5%. We shouldn't expect to hit pre-pandemic levels anytime soon — the Delta variant is surging, hospitalizations are rising and over 620,000 lives have been lost in America. Needless to say, the pandemic is not behind us.

For those who have remained employed during the pandemic, workloads, workflows and workdays have all shifted drastically. Roughly a year and a half after many offices switched to remote work, the economy and its workers have adapted to a new normal. The ways we relate to our jobs, and how we fulfill them, will be permanently altered by these transitions.

Not all changes, however, are good. While eight in 10 U.S. workers reported their jobs changing due to the pandemic, half of those people have found it harder to accomplish their tasks. For executives, now is the time to decide which pandemic-related changes to keep and which to nix.

Perhaps the largest, most widely felt change during the pandemic, has been the onset of remote work for large swathes of the economy. At its peak, 70% of surveyed employees were working remotely at least part of the time, according to a survey by Gallup. Not all workers, however, are eager to stay at home forever. Only 26% of U.S. workers surveyed reported a desire to work remotely in a post-pandemic world.

Read the full article about improving the workplace post-pandemic by Robin Ganzert at Forbes.