5 Years Later: 7 Ways COVID Forever Changed Our Workplaces

Five years ago, we were told to go home. Work there. Leave the workplace we knew behind.

As an HR pro, you’re probably the one who had to send that edict in the shadow of what would become a pandemic sparked by the COVID-19 virus.

And then you had to figure out how to make it work without a workplace. It’s been an unprecedented disruption.

Gallup Kept Close Eye on How COVID Affected the Workplace

But no one kept an eye on how the pandemic affected work like Gallup. In the past five years, Gallup measured how people’s work lives changed, conducting more than 400,000 surveys of U.S. employees. Researchers found the biggest ways workplaces were transformed and how they affected employees and businesses.

While some of the major changes may not seem surprising now because they’ve become the norm, think back to February 2020. Did you ever imagine employees working in their pajamas? Would you consider it fun to host a happy hour on a computer camera? Or did you think employees would embrace mental well-being initiatives?

Probably not.

Let’s take a closer look at where our workplaces were before COVID, where they are now, and how HR pros can adapt to the continuing workplace experiment.

1. Remote, Hybrid Work

COVID changed nothing more than where we work. In fact, the work-from-home vs. return-to-office debate battles on.

2020: 60% of remote-capable employees worked on-site all the time. A third of them worked hybrid and 8% worked exclusively remote.

2025: About 20% of remote-capable employees work onsite all the time. Fifty-five percent work a hybrid schedule and 26% work exclusively remote.

Future impact: Hybrid and remote work are here to stay. Gallup found two emerging work styles in the remote/hybrid world:

• Splitters prefer clear boundaries between work and personal time.
• Blenders prefer to move fluidly between work and life throughout the day.

“Neither work style is superior, but employees are more engaged and productive when their preferred workstyle matches how they actually work,” the Gallup researchers say.

So companies, HR pros and employees want to work together to overcome the logistical, teamwork and culture challenges.

2. Employee Engagement

We’ve talked about employee engagement, morale and loyalty long before COVID. But we never thought about it as much until the workforce dispersed and there was less actual engagement between employees.

2020: Before COVID mandates, 36% of employees were engaged at work. And just 14% were actively disengaged.

2025: Just about 30% of employees are engaged now, a 10-year low. And 17% are actively disengaged.

Future impact: Engagement fluctuated throughout the pandemic years as employees loved and hated their jobs and working circumstances. But one critical element in engagement is aligned expectations. That dropped considerably in the past five years: In 2020, 56% of employees said they knew what was expected of them at work. Now, just 45% feel that way.

“Without clear expectations, there is no agreed-on standard for success,” the researchers say. So, if employees continue remote and hybrid work, it’ll be important for managers and employees to regularly meet to evaluate and align expectations.

3. Employee Well-Being

Another subject that took center stage in the midst and wake of the pandemic is employee well-being. Whether it is or was the pandemic, employees aren’t thriving as well as they did.

2020: According to the Life Evaluation Index, 55% of employees were thriving and that jumped to 60% in the first year of the pandemic. Forty-three percent were struggling, though.

2025: Both well-being scores are trending the wrong way. Just 50% of employees are thriving. And 45% are struggling.

Future impact: For employees, well-being encompasses a lot. And employers want to help them manage it all — from mental and physical well-being to social and financial well-being.

Gallup researchers found mental well-being decreased the most in the past five years, as stress and worry spiked at the beginning of the pandemic and never fully rebounded. That’s why it’s important to not only offer employees mental well-being benefits. You also want to regularly give them guidance on how to fully access those benefits.

4. Company Loyalty

Employees don’t love their employers like they did before the pandemic. In fact, many employers feel the crunch from The Great Detachment — employees staying at their jobs but remaining disengaged and doing the minimum.

2020: Nearly 45% of employees were watching for or actively looking for new jobs. Just over 25% of them were extremely satisfied with their jobs.

2025: Fifty-one percent of employees are actively looking for or keeping an eye out for a new job. And job satisfaction is at an all-time low of 18%.

Future impact: With a cooling job market, many employees feel stuck in their discontent with their current jobs. So now is probably a good time to double down on your efforts to collect employee feedback and act on it. You’ll want to get feedback on two fronts: how employees feel about their individual roles and how they feel about the bigger picture — such as team dynamics and company culture.

5. Manager Crunch

It’s always been challenging to be a front-line manager. The pandemic only made it more difficult. Leading remote and hybrid teams added to the normal management complexities.

2020: Forty-six percent of managers were looking for a new job and 38% were engaged at work. Part of the reason: 47% of managers felt their organization cared about their well-being.

2025: Fifty-five percent of managers are looking for new jobs. Just 31% are engaged and only 22% feel their organization cares about their well-being.

Future impact: “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,” the researchers say. “This is bad news for everyone because managers play a major role in their team’s success.”

HR pros will want to increase support for front-line managers. Remember, they’re employees, too. You don’t just want them to educate employees on the resources available to juggle work and life. You want to encourage them to use those, too.

6. Respect for Each Other

Big factors that impact employee and management engagement: respect and civility. People don’t feel the love they once did. In some cases, they felt the workplace is downright mean.

2020: Almost 45% of employees felt they were treated with respect in the workplace.

2025: Today, just 37% feel respected.

Future impact: To be noted: The level of perceived respect dropped significantly during 2021-2022, during the Great Resignation. That coincided with the greatest number of employees being required to return to the office.

Employees often feel their contributions aren’t valued — and thus, they feel disrespected — when they can’t connect the dots to their work and organizational goals. Help them understand their impact — and formally thank them for their contributions — through regular one-on-one feedback meetings. Ideally, front-line managers handle those, but skip-level meetings work well, too.

7. Artificial Intelligence

We can’t have any conversations about how the workplace has changed in the last five years without talking about artificial intelligence (AI).

2020: Gallup didn’t have significant data on AI use and integration at the start of the pandemic. It was in its infancy.

2025: Almost 45% of white-collar employees have integrated AI into their work. Almost 30% of clerical or administrative workers use it. And about 22% of healthcare, social service, production or front-line employees use it.

Future impact: About half of employees feel using AI makes them more productive and efficient.

So, perhaps the most important thing employers can do going forward is to help employees use AI better. Amp up training on using AI responsibly and effectively.