More CEOs expect hybrid work is here to stay

• Fewer big-company CEOs expect workers to return to the office full-time, according to a KPMG survey.
• Just 34% of US CEOs expect office-based roles to return in the near future, down from 62% in 2023.

If you can work from home part of the time, you might be able to keep at it.

In a new survey, 34% of US CEOs said they expect workers whose roles were once tied to an office to be back in their cubicles five days a week in the next three years. That's down from 62% who held that view in 2023, according to the study released Thursday by KPMG US.

The shift in expectations over twelve months underscores how many more employers acknowledge that jobs that require workers to be back in the office — but only some of the time — are here to stay. It's been an at-times uneasy discussion. Proponents of this setup say it can boost morale and propel a better work-life balance when workers get to skip the commute on some days, but many big businesses have been pushing for a full-time RTO.

"Hybrid is likely here to stay," Paul Knopp, chair and CEO at KPMG US, told Business Insider.

The survey of 100 CEOs of large US companies found that 46% of them expect what had been office roles will be hybrid, up from 34% in 2023. But corporate chiefs seem to be holding the line on remote work, with only 3% of top bosses backing fully remote work. That's down from 4% in the prior year.

Beyond the staying power of hybrid working arrangements, the survey contained other nuggets of potentially welcome news for some workers feeling burned out: Three in 10 CEOs were exploring new ways of scheduling work, such as a four-day week or a four-and-a-half-day week.

The willingness to rethink how their offices operate comes as leaders otherwise appear upbeat about the prospects for America.

Eighty-seven percent of CEOs surveyed said they're confident in the growth trajectory of the US economy. And 78% felt that way about the global economy and the prospects for their companies in the next year.

Some seven in 10 CEOs said they expect to boost hiring during the next year, while only 4% expect to cut jobs during that time. About one-third of CEOs expected the hiring pickup would be "significant."

Leaders could have difficulty bringing on some of the workers they need because the overall job market remains tight. Perhaps that's one reason nearly eight in 10 CEOs said they were focused on boosting workers' skills.

AI to the rescue

Almost seven of 10 CEOs said they were trying to use generative artificial intelligence to fill gaps in staffing.

Some workers and workplace experts have raised concerns about whether AI will eliminate jobs, and that tension is being felt in the workplace. About one in four CEOs surveyed said employee resistance was a top challenge to rolling out the technology within their company; about six in 10 said they were prepared to address workers' hesitation to use Gen AI.

Nearly four in 10 CEOs expect their companies will move from AI pilots to broader use within their organizations during the next 12 to 18 months.

Knopp said CEOs are looking for ways to adopt the technology more widely because they understand its importance.

"Almost to a person, every CEO I speak to believes that generative AI is transformative and that it's not hype. And what they're trying to do is determine how they actually use it in the longer term, knowing that the use cases are still somewhat nascent. But we're seeing that move from nascent to actual more implementation," he said.

One big shift in CEO thinking around AI came in response to whether the companies they run would disclose the technology's use through watermarks such as "made with assistance of generative AI" to let consumers know content isn't human-made. Eighty-one percent of CEOs now plan to flag when AI is involved, up from 19% in 2023.

Nearly all of the CEOs — 95% — reported that their companies had procedures for promoting the responsible use of GAI.

There are still worries.

CEOs' outlooks weren't all sunny. The US presidential election is giving some people reason to hit pause on "significant investment decisions," according to the survey. This includes major capital spending and mergers. Sixty-two percent of CEOs said they would wait until after November to proceed with these outlays.

"An election of this magnitude certainly introduces less clarity and certainty about what the legislative agenda and the regulatory agendas might look like in 2025," Knopp said.

CEOs also reported being worried about high interest rates, geopolitical challenges in general, and inflation.

"Early in the year, it seemed like the Fed was going to cut rates relatively soon," he said. "There's not a lot of confidence right now around when rate reductions might start to take hold."