79 Percent of CEOs Say Remote Work Will Be Dead in 3 Years or Less

The 53 percent of employed Americans who work from home at least some of the time may be in for a rude awakening. In a new KPMG survey, a whopping 79 percent of U.S. corporate CEOs predicted that corporate roles that were performed in the office before the pandemic will be back in office full time within the next three years. Just a few months ago, only 34 percent thought that would be true. If you're an entrepreneur and you're willing to have employees work from home at least part of the time, this could signal a coming opportunity to hire top talent away from larger companies. The surveyed CEOs may have been emboldened by softening in the labor market and a recent wave of return-to-office mandates from major tech employers. That wave continues. After the survey was completed in August, Amazon announced that most employees would be required to work in the office five days a week, beginning next year. The corporate CEOs in the KPMG survey are in a position to make their own return-to-office predictions come true, and apparently many plan to do just that. Eighty-six percent of them said they would reward in-office employees with plum assignments, raises, and promotions. That suggests they intend to withhold those same things from employees who choose to work from home. But at a time when the vast majority of corporate CEOs seem ready to drive a stake through the heart of remote and hybrid work, working from home remains hugely popular among employees, including senior managers. Among other things, that's evident in the response so far to Amazon's return-to-office mandate. Some employees went directly to LinkedIn to declare themselves "open to work." RTO mandates can be layoffs in disguise. Of course, that's the real motivation behind some return-to-work orders. The entirely predictable departure of a large cohort of employees who don't want to or can't work in the office five days a week is a painless way to reduce head count without the muss and fuss of layoffs. But that's likely not the case for the CEO respondents in KPMG's survey. It seems improbable that they predicted remote work's demise out of a desire to reduce their workforce years in the future. Apparently, they genuinely hate having people work outside the office even one day a week. They hate it so much that they're willing to punish employees who do so by holding back raises and promotions. So much that, like Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, they're willing to see some of their top talent go elsewhere. What makes remote work so distasteful to such a large number of corporate CEOs? My Inc.com colleague Suzanne Lucas says it's harder to manage remote employees than ones you see every day, and that may well be true. Whatever the explanation, the continuing rollback of remote work options at larger employers creates a rare opportunity for startups and smaller employers to recruit employees who have sought-after skills. If you're willing to let people work at home at least one or two days a week, you can offer them a perk they really, really want, and that will cost you nothing at all. Expert Opinion By Minda Zetlin, Author of 'Career Self-Care: Find Your Happiness, Success, and Fulfillment at Work' @MindaZetlin