The Post-Pandemic Workplace: The Experiment Continues

In March 2020, the workplace changed forever.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced people to stay home with little warning, while businesses quickly activated continuity plans and emergency public health protocols took effect. Employees adopted new ways of working as the pandemic continued, and waves of people changed jobs amid The Great Resignation. Customer expectations also evolved, affecting how entire industries operate.

Throughout the pandemic, Gallup measured how people’s work and lives changed. This effort included more than 400,000 surveys of U.S. employees over the past five years. The research revealed 12 ways workplaces have transformed since the onset of the pandemic.

1. The Shift to Remote and Hybrid Work

In 2019, most remote-capable employees -- whose jobs could be done at least partially from home -- worked solely on-site (60%), while about one in three worked hybrid (32%), and 8% worked exclusively remote.

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, 70% of remote-capable employees shifted to working exclusively from home.

Today, more than four in five of these employees have some degree of remote flexibility with:

• 55% working hybrid
• 26% exclusively remote
• 19% exclusively on-site

Looking forward, most employees expect to remain working from their current location long term. Time will tell if return-to-office mandates in 2025 change this pattern, which has held stable since mid-2022.

Read more: Gallup Global Indicators: Hybrid Work

Hybrid work has its advantages and challenges. The autonomy of remote work flexibility empowers people to work where and when they work best. At the same time, it creates logistical, teamwork and culture challenges.

When Gallup studied employees’ preferred workstyle, we found that 50% define themselves as “splitters” and 50% as “blenders”:

• Splitters prefer to have clear boundaries between their work and personal time.
• Blenders prefer to mix work and personal time, moving fluidly between the two throughout the day.

Neither workstyle is superior, but employees are more engaged and productive when their preferred workstyle matches how they actually work.

Read more: More Employees Want a 9-to-5 Schedule Than Leaders Think

2. The Fall of Employee Engagement

The pandemic wreaked havoc on U.S. workplaces, creating lasting challenges that leaders continue to navigate.

After years of improvement, employee engagement took a turn for the worse in 2021. By 2024, the percentage of employees who are engaged at work fell to a 10-year low.

Gallup’s measure of employee engagement includes 12 essential employee needs.

One of the elements that has dropped the most is employees knowing what is expected of them at work. Having clear expectations is a foundational aspect of employee engagement and performance. Without clear expectations, there is no agreed-on standard for success.

In 2019, 55% of employees fully knew what was expected of them. This number plummeted when the pandemic hit and fell to a new record low in 2024 (44%).

Another driving force behind declining engagement was employees feeling less connected to their organization’s mission and purpose.

People want to know their work matters and that their employer makes a difference in the world. Sharing a mission and purpose also bonds people together. Highly engaged employees feel like they belong to a community, not just a job.

Today, only 30% of employees feel connected to their company’s mission/purpose, a record low. Fully remote workers have struggled even more than hybrid workers to feel this connection to their organization, with physical distance creating mental distance from their employer.

3. The Wellbeing and Mental Health Crisis

Since 2020, employee life evaluations have declined steadily to a record low in 2024, alongside declines in mental health and increases in daily negative emotions.

Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index measures respondents’ perceptions of where they stand now and in the future. The index shows that in 2019, 60% of employees were thriving, but by 2024, that number dropped to 50%.

Read more: U.S. Employee Life Evaluation Hits New Record Low

Record high levels of negative emotions, like stress and worry, have fueled declining wellbeing and mental health at work. At the onset of the pandemic, U.S. employees’ daily negative emotions spiked when public health issues were at their worst and remain elevated today as people recover from the trauma and disruption of the pandemic.

Younger workers are particularly susceptible to pessimistic life evaluations and higher levels of burnout.

Read more: The Economic Cost of Poor Employee Mental Health

4. Wellbeing Cultures Are Not Thriving

Gallup’s March 2024 survey of 151 Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs) from large companies reveals that wellbeing ranks among the top organizational priorities this year for one in four CHROs (23%).

Despite employers’ efforts, these changes have yet to make a difference in the workforce as a whole. In early 2024, only 21% of employees strongly agreed that their organization cares about their overall wellbeing, matching a record low. That percentage remains just above that mark today.

Employers can and do improve the wellbeing and mental health of their workforce. Creating a culture of wellbeing and providing the necessary resources is essential.

One of the most significant factors influencing employee wellbeing is the quality of management. For instance, when employees are engaged at work, they have 42% lower stress than actively disengaged employees. This highlights the vital role team leaders play in building a thriving workplace culture and directly supporting their team’s emotional wellbeing.

Read more: Despite Employer Prioritization, Employee Wellbeing Falters

5. The Great Detachment

As workplace frustrations increase and organizations struggle to regroup in a post-pandemic world, employees are feeling increasingly detached from their jobs. Gallup refers to this shift as the “Great Detachment.” Employees are seeking new job opportunities at the highest rate since 2015, while overall satisfaction with their employer has returned to a record low.

However, unlike during the “Great Resignation,” many frustrated employees are finding it difficult to leave their jobs due to a cooling job market and an economy strained by inflation. As a result, many feel stuck in their discontent.

Read more: The Great Detachment: Why Employees Feel Stuck

6. Navigating Disruption

Sudden change has been a constant since the pandemic. Continuous change may be the new normal for organizations, with seven in 10 employees (72%) reporting that their organization has undergone some form of disruption in the past year.

Leaders and managers are feeling this pressure the most, with about three in 10 (28% of each group) reporting “extensive disruption,” compared to about two in 10 (18%) of individual contributors who say the same.

As businesses adjust to fluctuating markets, managers are reporting disruption in the form of additional job responsibilities for employees (69%), team restructuring (55%) and budget cuts (46%).

As a result, many managers are being asked to do more with less while also adapting to changes in personnel and reporting structures.

Read more: Disruptive Change is Hitting Managers and Leaders Hardest

7. New Customer Expectations

Customers have developed new habits and expectations for customer service, many influenced by the conveniences introduced during the pandemic.

As a result, 56% of employees report noticing changes in customer expectations since the pandemic, with 71% attributing changes to either customers being more demanding or having higher expectations for a better digital experience.

At the same time, customer centricity has declined. Only 28% of employees strongly agree they are proud of the products and services their organization offers, a record low. Employees are clearly acknowledging that they aren’t as customer centric as they could be and that their organization could provide their customers with better services -- a sentiment that has only intensified amid new customer expectations.

Read more: Employee Detachment Threatens Customer Satisfaction

8. The Manager Squeeze

As the challenges of leading teams in the new workplace continued to increase, managers became less engaged, more burned out and more likely to quit than the people they manage.

This is bad news for everyone because managers play a major role in their team's success.

Read more: The Manager Squeeze

9. The Decline of Respect in the Workplace

Workplace civility has declined in recent years. Drops in employee engagement and wellbeing suggest widespread discontent across the workforce, which may contribute to employees feeling disrespected.

The percentage of employees who feel respected at work fell significantly during the height of the Great Resignation (2021-2022) when workers quit their jobs at historically high rates. Some may have changed jobs because they felt less respected or undervalued, while others may have felt disrespected watching others receive promotions and pay increases.

Further, many employers required workers to return to the office during this time period. Remote-capable workers forced back on-site reported the largest decline in feeling respected, dropping from 46% to 35% in 2022.

Read more: Respect at Work Returns to a Record Low

10. The Emerging AI Revolution

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) as an everyday tool is among the most revolutionary things to happen in the past five years.

AI is taking off as a virtual assistant in many workplaces, yet its adoption remains slower than expected.

Forty-four percent of white-collar employees report that their organization is adopting AI to improve business practices such as productivity and efficiency, compared to 21% of frontline and production who say the same.

However, employee usage remains somewhat limited. Only 15% of white-collar employees use AI weekly, while 54% never use it (vs. 81% of frontline and production workers who never use it). Among those who do use AI, 45% say it makes them more productive and efficient.

Read more: AI in the Workplace

11. Change Leadership Matters

When the pandemic began, leaders and managers took extraordinary steps to support employees. They implemented remote work flexibility, provided time off to care for loved ones, and even eliminated performance ratings. Clear communication about these changes and moving forward after the pandemic was key to employee readiness and resilience. For instance, when organizations clearly communicated these plans, employees were:

• 4.3x more prepared to do their job
• 8.7x more likely to feel confident in their leaders
• 10.2x more likely to be comfortable with the changes taking place

Unfortunately, change fatigue set in as the pandemic continued, and leaders’ efforts to create effective change management slipped.

By 2022, far fewer employees felt informed, prepared to do their job, or that their organization cared about their wellbeing compared to the start of the pandemic.

Read more: Resilience at Work: Leading the Post-Pandemic Workplace

12. Managers Matter

Worldwide, the cost of poor management and lost productivity from not engaged or actively disengaged employees is $8.8 trillion, or 9% of global GDP. Improving management is perhaps the easiest way to boost productivity within organizations.

A simple but powerful thing managers can do for their team is to establish a “coaching habit.”

Nearly eight in 10 employees who strongly agree they have received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged at work -- regardless of how many days they worked in the office. In fact, employees who receive weekly, meaningful feedback are four times more likely to be engaged than those who do not.

The problem is only 21% of workers strongly agree they received meaningful feedback from their manager in the past week.

What makes feedback meaningful?

Gallup researchers found that deeply meaningful conversations can be as short as 15 to 30 minutes if done weekly and they tend to include discussion of:

• current goals and priorities at work
• collaboration and relationships
• recognition or appreciation for recent work
• employee strengths or the things they do well

Read more: A Great Manager’s Most Important Habit

Conclusion

The forced workplace experiment that began in 2020 introduced changes faster than anyone anticipated, reshaping how people work in ways once thought impossible. Five years later, the aftershocks remain. There have been valuable lessons about autonomy and efficiency: Many jobs can be done more independently than previously assumed. Yet, the increased physical distance has also created mental distance between employees and their employers, putting mental health and customer service at risk.

Managers' roles are more complex and demanding than ever. Leaders are reevaluating what "workplace culture" truly means. The best-run organizations studied by Gallup have maintained strong cultures by continuously refining the role of the manager. Each employee has unique goals, strengths, and life circumstances, and managers are best positioned to understand and align these with business needs.

No matter how work evolves, great managers remain the foundation of resilient, productive, customer-focused cultures. Their role must be more intentional and streamlined than ever. The challenges are real -- but so is the opportunity.