After a year of working from home, employees are starting to feel the burden of online meetings and remote communication. Remote work schedules are starting to impact productivity, signaling the first signs that employees won't work like this forever. However, the pandemic has changed the workplace permanently, and employees also aren't likely to go back to "normal" either.

"We are starting to see a curve of diminishing returns. That initial productivity boost from having the extra couple of hours at home and not in the car is fading. We're hitting a plateau, if not starting to recede," Mark Coxon, technology sales director at Tangram, tells GlobeSt.com.

Enthusiasm has waned since the beginning of the pandemic, when companies and employees alike were bullish on permanent remote work. "In the first few weeks of the pandemic, most people adapted fairly well in transitioning to digital tools. We were even kind of excited to have some of our free time back, avoid our daily commute, get a reprieve from having to be in the office every day," says Coxon, adding that everything from happy hours to conferences and trade shows have moved into the virtual sphere.