Most CEOs expect employees to return to the office for the traditional five days a week within the next three years, a new poll shows.
KPMG recently released its annual CEO Outlook survey for 2023, revealing that almost two-thirds (64%) of leaders around the world believe employees will be back in the office for the full working week by 2026.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced office workers to work from home and many companies have since introduced hybrid working methods, allowing employees to come into the office for part of the week or stay at home full-time.
Avoiding tensions
But of the 1,300 executives surveyed from the world’s largest companies, most appeared to be in favor of a return to the old ways of working.
Additionally, a large majority (87%) believed that there would be better compensation and promotion opportunities for employees who came back in, as opposed to those who stayed home.
However, the CEO of KPMG in Britain, Jon Holt, warned that there was no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to forcing workers to come in, and that there could be ‘tensions between leaders and employers’ emerged if this was attempted.
He added: “Issuing an ‘all hands on deck’ edict is a simple answer to a complex problem – it won’t work for all businesses. Some kind of hybrid working will likely remain a useful way to attract and retain good people. the CEOs know their business needs.”
Big tech has already issued office work mandates, including companies like Apple, Amazon and Google. However, many of these workers have disengaged, illustrating Holt’s point about tensions between employers and employees.
According to Holt, the solution is for “CEOs… to work thoughtfully and thoughtfully with colleagues” if they want them back in the office. In fact, working from home seems to be so important to employees that they would be willing to take a pay cut to do it forever – or even quit if they couldn’t.
Andy Wilson, director at cloud storage company Dropbox, believes that “deploying technology that enables seamless collaboration across multiple locations” is the way to ensure leaders don’t favor office workers over remote workers.
He also added that “using the right AI tools across the business can improve efficiency, boost productivity and enable geographic diversity, by empowering people to find what they need and to keep work moving – wherever they are located.”