Some CEOs have been vexed by remote work for the better part of three years. They’ve been irked to no end by empty offices, constant Zoom calls, and being unsure exactly where their employees are. But the sea change has started, and many workers are already back in the office. And those who show up have a good chance of being rewarded for it.
A majority of CEOs believe remote work will end in the next few years, according to the annual U.S. CEO Outlook survey from consulting firm KPMG. Sixty-two percent of the 400 CEOs surveyed—all of whom are from companies with at least $500 million in revenue—said they envisioned roles that used to be in-office before the pandemic would return to the office within the next three years. That’s almost double the 34% who made a similar prediction in last year’s survey.
“I attribute that change to business leaders, leaning into the belief that full-time, in the office collaboration leads to more productivity,” KPMG’s U.S. chair and CEO Paul Knopp tells Fortune.
In another indication of how changed thinking, the number of CEOs who expected roles that used to be in-person to become entirely remote was just 4%. Virtually no CEOs believed that roles that used to be completely in-person will remain completely remote, as they were in the spring of 2020. Knopp, though, doesn’t think this survey’s results are a definitive forecast, rather they illustrate that companies are attempting to split the difference between the unbridled flexibility of remote work and the stringent mandates of a full five days a week in the office. American workplaces are in what he termed an “experimentation phase.”
“Many CEOs are still trying to imagine what is best for their business,” Knopp says. “That 62% is a continued journey towards more in-person collaboration, but I don't think it is a reliable predictor of what we might look like in three years.”
The reason for the uncertainty, he adds, is that many companies are still unsure of what’s ideal for balancing productivity with attendance. Some CEOs are “leaning into the notion that full time could be better for their businesses,” Knopp says. “I think it's yet to be determined though whether it actually will be or not.”
Signaling another possible watershed moment was that CEOs signaled they will start giving preference to employees who come into the office. In fact, 90% of the CEOs say they’re likely to “reward employees who make an effort to come into the office with favorable assignments, raises or promotions.” Only 1% of CEOs said they were unlikely to do so. The other 9% in the survey selected neutral, meaning they were neither likely nor unlikely to do so.
These findings point to a future in which companies no longer provide perks like free lunch and onsite gyms to incentivize all employees to come in. Instead they plan to explicitly reward those who go to the bother of coming into the office. After Labor Day, an additional 1 million U.S. workers were subjected to new return to office demands, according to data from JLL, a commercial real estate firm. Despite that big number, JLL cautioned not to expect a dramatic uptick in attendance as soon as the mandates kicked in because employees would be slow to change their habits, particularly if they liked their remote work arrangements.
Knopp says he isn’t against the idea of offering carrots to those who decide to show up in person, but it should be done with care. “It's not without risk if you're going to mandate more in-person time in the office,” he says. “So I think I would move forward cautiously, I would do a lot of listening to my workforce.”
Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of the leadership consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, is more pessimistic about rewarding office time. He says factoring in the amount of time an employee spends in the office into raises and promotions would create a “counterintuitive scenario” in which employees are no longer rewarded for their productivity.
“Companies that pursue this type of incentive scheme will see, quite naturally, their performance and productivity go down,” Tsipursky says. “What gets measured and rewarded is what gets done.”
Adopting such a policy could hurt employee retention, he adds. “High-quality employees will see that performance and productivity aren't rewarded as much, and they'll leave for companies that value performance and productivity over presentism and brown-nosing,” Tsipursky says.
Since return to work mandates started trickling in after vaccines became widely available in spring 2021, some companies have tried offering up either perks to encourage employees to come in or punish those who don’t. For example, real estate research company CoStar raffled lucrative prizes like a $10,000 bonus, flights on the company’s jet, and a new Tesla to employees who showed up to the office. Meanwhile, in the legal world, some law firms adopted a more punitive approach and began telling employees that poor attendance would mean lower bonuses.
The examples from CoStar, despite being rather lavish, were still benefits outside of an employee’s day-to-day work and the decision to withhold bonuses is more punishment than reward. The new trend appears to point to a CEO mindset that more clearly ties career progression to in-person work.
Knopp, who believes workplaces are still figuring out what the new status quo will be, advises everyone to proceed with caution. “Whether you're a worker, an employee, or you're a leader, we're playing chess,” he says. “You have to think through how this all plays out in the future.”
