Less than half of mid-market CEOs have returned to the office full-time and about a quarter plan to work a hybrid schedule indefinitely, according to the latest CEO Survey from Hofstra University’s Frank G. Zarb School of Business and New York-based IPA 100 firm Marcum LLP. Forty-eight percent of the 254 CEOs surveyed in June reported working in the office five days a week, while about 10% continue to work entirely from home; about a third (32%) are back in the office three days a week or fewer.
Even as many employers are looking to bring employees back to the office, the survey demonstrates that the trend toward permanent remote or hybrid work is being embraced by mid-market CEOs, as evidenced by the 77% of respondents who provide their employees a part-time remote option – with two-thirds expecting that to continue for the foreseeable future. While some CEOs cited ongoing concerns related to the pandemic, many more said they prefer a hybrid schedule because they believe it increases productivity, while reducing commuting time and costs, and providing better work-life balance.
In terms of their outlook for the general business climate, just 34% of respondents rated their business outlook at an “8” or higher (with 10 being highest on a scale of 1-10) – down 10 percentage points since the last Marcum-Hofstra survey two months ago. In the financial services industry, just 11% of CEOs rated their confidence at an “8” or higher, compared to 50% in the last survey.
“It is clear that the full-time, office-based work model has become a thing of the past and that CEOs as a whole are reimagining how their workforces should be structured,” says Marcum chairman and CEO Jeffrey Weiner. “At the same time, they are having to adjust their business planning strategies in order to accommodate an increasingly dire economic outlook. This is an extremely challenging environment in which to plan, and it will require resilience and flexibility in order to determine how to deploy both human and financial resources most effectively.”
