In a Harvard Business Review article, Nadella said that the tail-end of the pandemic has bought "real structural changes" — and two megatrends for the future workplace.

He said the first is hybrid work, which is a result of the changed expectations of everyone around the flexibility that they want to exercise in when, where, and how they work.

The second trend will be the great reshuffle where people want to recontract  the real meaning of work and sort of asking themselves the question of which company do they want to work for and what job function or profession they want to pursue.

“I think we should sort of perhaps just get grounded on what are we seeing in the expectations. For example, when we see all of the data, the reality is close to 70 percent of the people say they want flexibility. At the same time, 70 percent  also want that human connection so that they can collaborate. So therein lies that hybrid paradox. Interestingly enough, if you look at the other sort of confounding piece of data: 50-odd percent of the people say they want to come into work so that they can have focus time. Fifty-odd percent also want to stay at home so that they can have focus time”, he said.

Nadella said  it's probably that firms are not overly dogmatic.

“I  don't think we have settled on the new norms and we are taking what I would call a much more organic approach right now.”

Nadella said that Microsoft wants to practice and what we want to evangelise is empowering every manager and every individual to start producing norms that work for that team, given the context of what that team is trying to get done.

“In some sense, we are really saying, let's just use an organic process to build up through empowerment new norms that work for the company to be productive. Nobody quits companies. They quit managers."