Stimulation and stress have a direct relationship with productivity and performance, says Dina Smith, so workers should try to moderate their stress to find a happy medium. Exercise, especially outdoor workouts, meditation and connecting with others are proven stress-reduction techniques that can help employees with too much stress find balance and perform better at work.

People crave a sense of control, but relying on power rather than meaningful choices to satisfy that urge has several pitfalls for leaders, writes Susan Fowler. "Feeling in control is essential for your own well-being, but most importantly for the creativity, innovation and resilience to be the leader your people deserve," she writes.

McKinsey surveyed 800 executives worldwide during the pandemic to see how the workplace will change permanently -- with more remote work, more digitization of work and more contract workers instead of full-timers. "Two years from now, about 70% of the executives in our survey expect to use more temporary workers and contractors onsite at their companies than they did before the crisis," according to the report.

To reduce burnout and manage an accumulation of negative emotions, mental exhaustion and stress, employees and managers need to collaborate to resolve workplace issues, writes Hachem Ramki. Employees should work on embracing relaxation and looking for support, while employers should work on improving the atmosphere, distributing tasks and limiting monotonous work and repetitive tasks.

Companies such as IBM, Automatic Data Processing and SquareFoot are using apps, algorithms, surveys and other means to determine which employees should return to the office first. "I want to be able to split teams up so that if we have something that happens on a Monday, and it has a potential spreader effect, I don't knock out a whole team," says Don Weinstein, an ADP vice president.

New York City's finance industry has taken a cautious approach to returning to the office, with some firms asking employees to come back to work and others allowing them to continue working from home. JPMorgan is one big-name company that has asked some staff to return, with its CEO Jamie Dimon noting that "going back to work is a good thing."

UK broadband provider Openreach didn't know why residents of Aberhosan, Wales, were seeing their internet disconnect daily at 7 a.m. for months, until workers used a device known as a Spectrum Analyzer to detect "a large burst of electrical interference" each morning coming from an old television set. Thankfully, the owner of the TV agreed to stop using it -- and the village will be upgrading to fiber internet in the next few months.