KPMG has released their CEO Outlook report for 2024 [PDF] and we’ll be completely honest, we couldn’t care less about half of this crap. Economic outlook? Pfft. Generative AI? *jerking motion* Call us when companies are actually using it in earnest and not just telling survey takers they plan to invest in it.
This bit though:
83 percent of the 1,345 CEOs surveyed expect a full return to office over the next three years, up from 64 percent in 2023. That number increases to 87 percent for CEOs in the 60-69 age group because boomers are actually the worst.
Male CEOs are more gung ho (the spellcheck wants to correct this to “bunghole” and honestly…) on a full return to office compared to their female counterparts: 84 percent of them expect a full return to office within three years while 78 percent of female CEOs feel the same.
Guess the era of the employees having all the power is gone, or at least that’s what CEOs think. Was nice while it lasted.
This is just a fancy way of saying that the senile CEOs surveyed here royally screwed up by being over leveraged in legacy commercial real estate and are forcing workers back into the office to save face to their own stakeholders.
At the same time these truant “leaders” are announcing these decisions from the comfort of their vacation homes on the other side of the country that everyone else must return to the office, they’re also talking out of the other side of their mouth when it comes time to exploit workers in the developing world for outsourced office jobs.
Remember, these are not serious people being surveyed. They’re just trying to coast to their bonsues on short-sighted decisions with long term consequences they themselves will never face because the silver wave is about to waah them all away in a few years.
I am somewhat on track with you, but I am trying to see it from both sides of the coin. It is a little hard to support the CEO’s and their careless remarks that the employee’s no longer have any power, I think if every one of them walked out on you right now you would see things in a different light. These remote employee’s are happy and enjoy their job’s and do not mind working long hours that is required during tax time because they can see their children and spouse and not feel disconnected from their families due to the long hours required by the job. My wife is one of these remote workers and she said as long as I can see all of you, it put things into perspective for her, she could see the reasons she works so hard and it gave her more focus and more drive to work as hard as she could to ensure the ones she loves are taken care, she gives her all so the company will see how hard she is working for them so that she can continue to work remotely.
At my company, the CEO has been on a jihad for close to two years now to get everyone back in the office, despite the fact that less than half of the employees now live in the same city as the office. There is absolutely no evidence that working in the office results in higher productivity, greater quality, more revenues, etc., but that doesn’t stop these CEOs from making declarations that its necessary for everyone to be in the office. Amazon has had record growth, revenues and profits over the last few years, and yet they still feel the need to force everyone back into the office for some reason. Seems like its more about power than collaboration/teamwork, doesn’t it?
But back to my CEO. Dude is almost never in the office, which all of the employees definitely notice. The vast majority of his time is spent either at one of his homes in a different state than the office, or on vacation. So, yeah.