Reimagining the Workplace An era of new opportunities for change.

• Author: Wolf, Laurie B.

As we move into a new phase of pandemicinduced life, I am reflecting on where we have been--from life quakes to the Great Resignation--and considering what comes next for our workplaces

"Life quakes" is what we called the personal experiences we saw all around us in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation, despair, divorce, job loss, the childcare crisis, isolation of the elderly-this list is inadequate in naming the cracks and chasms that appeared over the last two years. We watched as this slow-motion disaster ripped through our lives at breathtaking speed, rendering time almost irrelevant and eliminating the boundaries between our personal lives and our daily workplace experiences.

Staff meetings were now in our living rooms, makeshift offices in our bedroom and on our kitchen tables. The impact of each person's experience was woven into every staff meeting or mundane scheduling activity. Each conversation was an invitation to be more human as we turned toward personal connections in the workplace because they were unavoidable and because we deeply needed them. In addition to the regular work focused meetings, I and other leaders I know planned meetings that focused only on personal connections to better support each person while also keeping us connected as a team.

Quakes gave way to aftershocks, which stayed consistent but lessened in intensity. With vaccines and increased attention on accessible healthcare, hope seemed possible again. We began to think about tomorrow, not just getting through to the end of the workday. We also moved to a time of re-assessment, asking ourselves what is most important in this newly recognized fragile life. We were able to break the frame on so many assumptions that everything we knew now seemed like a question rather than a statement of fact. We walked around carefully with one another with a common sense of understanding that most questions and answers were emotionally charged with equal parts exhaustion, hope, and uncertainty.

Many workplaces had seen this before, post 9/11, when we reassessed what mattered most in our lives. We watched as volunteerism shifted, philanthropy shifted, and, yes, the workforce also changed. Making life more meaningful seemed like our collective responsibility. And so, too, in this stage we focused on what we could control. Employees asked for wage increases, title changes, time off, and family leave.

Demands for workplace equity were more seen, heard, and...