For Microsoft, the COVID-19 pandemic and remote work didn't mean a slew of new benefits but instead meant modifying what the company already had and making it work during that difficult time.

Fred Thiele, Microsoft's vice president of global benefits and mobility, spoke with HRE's Dawn Kawamoto during the Health & Benefits Leadership Conference, held in May at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.

"It's that notion of meeting people where they are," Thiele said. "Normally, we say that as a kind of metaphor but here it could mean meeting them literally where they are, a thousand, two thousand miles away."