Back at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, insurance giant Allstate was among the many employers that moved employees to remote work, citing health concerns. With little knowledge about how the arrangement would go and hopes that it would be temporary, the Northbrook, Ill.-based company transitioned 95 percent of its global workforce to remote work in one weekend—no small feat, considering Allstate has 40,000-plus employees.
But as weeks turned into months and months turned into more than a year, Allstate started to realize that the arrangement, although complicated at first due to figuring out tech and logistics, was working. Work was getting done. Employees were connecting with one another and with clients over Zoom, perhaps in a deeper way than before.
