Just 6 out of 158 U.S. CEOs said they’ll prioritize bringing workers back to the office full-time in 2024, according to a new survey released by the Conference Board.
Why it matters: Executives are increasingly resigned to a world where employees don’t come in every day, as hybrid work arrangements — mixing work from home and in-office — become the norm for knowledge workers.
Zoom in: “Maintain hybrid work,” was cited as a priority by 27% of the U.S. CEOs who responded to the survey, conducted in October and November.
- A separate survey of chief financial officers by Deloitte, conducted in November, found that 65% of CFOs expect their company to offer a hybrid arrangement this year.
State of play: “Remote work appears likely to be the most persistent economic legacy of the pandemic,” write Goldman Sachs economists in a recent note.
- About 20%-25% of workers in the U.S. work from home at least part of the week, according to data Goldman cites.
- That’s below a peak of 47% during the pandemic but well above its prior average of around 3%.
My company just finished a multi-million dollar office buildout and we all worked from home for 6 months while it happened. Now we’re back in the office the only people really into it are the managers… Who have private offices. With doors. The rest of us get “hotelling” without cubicle walls.
But they did it for us, they say. Because, ya know, we were all begging for a louder, more distracting work environment and a fancy kitchen with 140" ultra wide displays and not enough cabinets for personal storage
The worst part is that the open office plan has been shown time and time again to actually decrease work output yet somehow people are still pushing for it.
Yep, it’s total shit but hey, the pictures of it look nice!
I’ve been asking everyone at work to find me a single study that says open offices are good for productivity
I guarantee that there were some in the mid 1990s when it was a new concept and few people had implemented it. Now we have a generation of people who never looked back since.
It would be a real shame if productivity were to fall off a cliff due to all the distractions. A real shame.
Right before the pandemic my company moved to a new office. It was an hour-long commute from my house (the previous office was a 15 minute walk), located downtown next to a homeless shelter and an abandoned casino, with an open-office concept (the previous office had many enclosed rooms, though we did share them), and the kitchen had a commissary where we could buy snacks. The executive was very proud of the new digs and spent a fortune on the decor.
I considered it a huge downgrade. The millions of deaths and long-Covid cases aside, Covid-19 was pretty awesome.