It’s finally happening: COVID-19 cases have declined enough that major companies are calling workers back to the office.

Leaders and professionals know that our human compulsion to acquire and defend territory is little different from that of mockingbirds and finches defending their hedges.

Beam me up, Scotty? Not quite, but there is something next gen about holographic facilities.

Illustrated by Ivy Liu

Employers and even President Biden said they want people back at the office. But add one more item to the pile of reasons employees are less than enthusiastic about going back to the workplace: the skyrocketing cost of commuting.

Supervisors are called on to help people navigate personal challenges, whether or not they have the training to do so.

Employers are trying desperately to ignore that we’ve become fundamentally different humans.

The great enforced global experiment in working from home is coming to an end, as vaccines, the Omicron variant and new therapeutic drugs bring the COVID-19 crisis under control.

In the new era of work, the term “hybrid” is sometimes misrepresented to mean either HQ or the home office.

Several months into being sent to work from home, Ms. Egziabher got a promotion and an 11 percent raise: “If I had continued going into the office,” she added, “there might have been some excuse around likability.”

The new staples of office life go beyond hand sanitizer and air filters. For some Wall Street banks, they involve natural light, lots of plants and cold brew on tap, too.