Workplace” used to be defined by physical location. Even when employees were hard at work elsewhere, from home or on the road, they were “out of the office.” When offices began to shut down in March 2020 to slow down the covid-19 pandemic, few realized that they were embarking on a fundamental and enduring transformation of the very concept of “workplace” and their relationship to it. Both workers and managers had to adjust on the fly as the weeks rolled by with no end in sight. Many companies had to deal with enabling a newly remote workforce while keeping workers productive and figuring out how the pandemic would affect their business, for better or worse. As everyone settled into the “new normal”—children and pets dropping in on video conferences, people learning how to blur their backgrounds to hide their makeshift home offices—the necessary changes began showing the way to a workplace future that might improve on the “old normal.”

Computing and infrastructure giant Dell Technologies found itself re-examining its own assumptions about the world of work and redefining every expectation, says Jennifer Saavedra, the company’s chief human resources officer. “Early on I heard people say, ‘I just can’t wait to get back to doing things the way they were.’ That’s not ever a strategy for success,” Saavedra says. “It’s about 2 MIT Technology Review Insights reflecting on these last 18 months. What have we learned? What are some of the great things we want to carry forward? What were some of those challenges or obstacles? How do we renew expectations?” .

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