In a new survey, 34% of U.S. CEOs said they expect workers whose roles were once office-bound to be back in their offices five days a week within the next three years. This is a drop compared to the 62% who shared this opinion in 2023, according to the study published Thursday by KPMG US.
The year-over-year shift in expectations highlights how more and more employers are recognizing that jobs that require workers to return to the office – but only occasionally – are here to stay. This has been a difficult discussion at times. Supporters of this setup say it can boost morale and promote a better work-life balance when workers can avoid commuting on certain days, but many large companies are pushing for an RTO at full-time.
“Hybrid is probably here to stay,” Paul Knopp, chairman and CEO of KPMG US, told Business Insider.
The survey of 100 CEOs of major U.S. companies found that 46% expect their office roles to be hybrid, up from 34% in 2023. But business leaders appear to be staying the course on remote work, with only 3% of them. the best bosses support fully remote work. This is down from 4% the previous year.
Beyond the sustainability of hybrid work arrangements, the survey contained other nuggets of potentially welcome news for some workers feeling burned out: three in ten CEOs were exploring new ways of organizing work, such as a four-week days or a schedule of four and a half days. half-day week.
The push to rethink how their offices operate comes as leaders otherwise appear optimistic about America’s prospects.
Eighty-seven percent of CEOs surveyed say they are confident in the growth trajectory of the U.S. economy. And 78% of them feel this way about the global economy and their company’s prospects for the next year.
About seven in 10 CEOs said they plan to increase hiring over the next year, while only 4% plan to cut jobs during this period. About a third of CEOs expected the hiring recovery to be “significant.”
Executives may struggle to recruit some of the workers they need as the overall labor market remains tight. That may be one reason why nearly eight in 10 CEOs said they are focused on boosting worker skills.
AI to the rescue
Nearly seven in ten CEOs said they are trying to use generative artificial intelligence to fill staffing gaps.
Some workers and labor experts have expressed concerns that AI could eliminate jobs, and this tension is being felt in the workplace. About one in four CEOs surveyed said employee resistance was a major challenge to deploying technology within their company; about six in ten say they are ready to address workers’ hesitancy to use Generation AI.
Nearly four in ten CEOs expect their company to move from AI pilots to broader use within their organization over the next 12 to 18 months.
Knopp said CEOs are looking for ways to adopt technology more broadly because they understand its importance.
“Almost everyone, every CEO I talk to believes that generative AI is transformative and it’s not hype. And what they’re trying to do is figure out how they actually use it in the long term, knowing that the use cases are still “It’s somewhat nascent. But we’re seeing an evolution in the nascent implementation towards real implementation,” he said.
Paul Knopp is Chairman and CEO of KPMG US. KPMG
A big shift in CEO thinking about AI came in response to the question of whether the companies they led would disclose the technology’s use through watermarks such as “made with the help of a 81% Generative AI” to let consumers know the content is not human-made. Eighty-one percent of CEOs now plan to report when AI is involved, up from 19% in 2023.
Nearly all CEOs — 95% — said their company had procedures to promote responsible use of GAI.
There are still problems.
The outlook for CEOs was not all sunny. The U.S. presidential election is giving some reason to pause on “major investment decisions,” the survey found. This includes significant capital expenditures and mergers. Sixty-two percent of CEOs said they would wait until after November to make these expenditures.
“An election of this magnitude certainly introduces less clarity and certainty as to what the legislative agenda and the regulatory agenda might look like in 2025,” Knopp said.
CEOs also said they were concerned about high interest rates, geopolitical challenges in general and inflation.
“At the beginning of the year, it looked like the Fed was going to cut rates pretty quickly,” he said. “There’s not a lot of confidence right now about when rate cuts might start to take hold.”
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