When CEOs Really Think We’ll Come Back to Work

“I certainly imagine everyone back in [the office]. I do think from a cultural point of view—apprenticeship, the sense of belonging—you are better together.”

— Jane Fraser, chief executive officer, Citigroup Inc.

“What are the long-term ramifications of maybe some more working from home environments versus going to an office?…I think there’s a lot of ins and outs and pluses and minuses that are just, as you sit here today, are truly kind of impossible to predict. But I am not a believer that there’s going to be just this fundamental real negative shock to what business travel looks like over time.”

—Marcel Verbaas, CEO, Xenia Hotels & Resorts Inc. XHR -0.96%

“I don’t have a hotline to the governor of California. If I did, I’d be calling him and saying, open the damn state up…A lot of people, while we like being at home initially, we are all social creatures, and sitting at home forever does not sound like an attractive prospect.”

— James Fish, CEO, Waste Management Inc.

“We think that the way of working is going to be hybrid. People will work from the office, will work from home…Over time, office printing will regain momentum and will grow again, but it will be always lower than what we were expecting it to be before the pandemic because again, people will not be spending so much time in the office…At the same time when we look at the Home business and pages printed at home, we think that there will be more than we were expecting before the pandemic and one effect will compensate [for] the other.”

—Enrique J. Lores, CEO, HP Inc.

“Given the global rollout of vaccines, we are currently planning on the basis that schools and [SAT] test centers will reopen in a socially distant fashion during March, and that normal operations will resume in the second half of 2021…We will occupy a significantly smaller corporate office square footage.”

—Sally Johnson, financial chief, Pearson PSO -2.97% PLC

“I’m a long-term believer in New York, but it’s going to be a difficult period over the next year or two…We’ve been back since September, and let me tell you, it’s great to be back, and we’re so much more productive in the office than we were over the summer and last spring on Zoom. And I think a lot of people when they get back will realize that big productivity pickup versus maybe the short-term benefit of not having to commute.”

—Stephen Plavin, CEO, Blackstone Mortgage Trust Inc.

“The worst of the restrictions are hopefully behind us, knock on wood, as we’ve seen some of the most restrictive states like California start to ease up…While many businesses may technically be open, the inability to operate at full capacity can be a major obstacle. The vaccines are definitely a positive, but distribution will take time. And the presence of additional variants is certainly a wild card.”

— Lisa Palmer, CEO, Regency Centers Corp.

“I’m hopeful that we’re nearing the end of the impact of the pandemic…Many companies are expecting by the end of summer to at least have some employees back in offices, which I view as a very positive thing.”

— David Schaeffer, CEO, Cogent Communications Holdings Inc.

“We think that it’s really the beginning of the recovery. I can’t really speak to the pace, but certainly, the news out of Texas and some other states yesterday was good in the sense that being able to move more restaurants into the 75% to 100% capacity. So I actually think things are just going to get better from those numbers.”

—Paul Murphy, CEO, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers Inc.

“Here in California, we’re encouraged by the positive trends we’re seeing and we’re hopeful they’ll continue to improve and we’ll be able to reopen our parks to guests with limited capacity by late April.”

— Bob Chapek, CEO, Walt Disney Co.

“Restaurants need the dine-in margins to really regain financial success…It’s good momentum for folks and good news for the industry.”

—Laura Rea Dickey, CEO of Dickey’s Barbecue Restaurants Inc., on the Texas reopening

“A certain amount of people work from home permanently. I think there will be a large portion who permanently work in the office. There will be some hybrids, where you spend two days or two weeks at home and two weeks in the office…It will reduce the need for commercial real estate, but there are huge weaknesses to the Zoom world. I mean most of us learn by an apprenticeship system, by seeing mistakes, going [on] trips, how to handle a client, how do you handle the problem. It’s hard to inculcate culture and character and all those things. It’s very hard to build and develop a deeper relationship on Zoom.”

— Jamie Dimon, CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

“Sometime in 2022 is where I’m thinking…Then we can feel safe.”

—Khalid Parekh, CEO of Amsys Group, on when he expects all of his company’s employees to return to the office

“Return to work is not return to normal in 2021. I mean, you’re going to the office, you’re still going to be subject to personal protective equipment, to social distancing, to discussions about mandatory vaccination or not, travel restrictions. All of these things will keep the office environment, the good parts of the office environment, still somewhere out of reach for a period of time.”

— David Henshall, CEO, Citrix Systems Inc.

“Covid-19 was perhaps the worst-possible catalyst, but it forced us to make a transition that was long overdue…We can make work-at-home work for our business and have offered our employees the choice to work from home permanently or return to the office when it is safe.”

— Margaret Keane, CEO, Synchrony Financial

“The office plays a very, very big, and very important part of the culture. And we want it to do that in the future, too. So we will keep those [office] locations, and we want the culture to really appear and grow within that environment as an office. But we also want to give that freedom and flexibility.”

—Katarina Berg, chief human resources officer, Spotify Technology SA, SPOT -0.28% on allowing employees to choose remote work while also keeping the company’s offices open from Stockholm to New York

“Work will never go back to where we were. I can tell you right now. We will never go back. The reason is that we have found some very good things. Earlier people used to travel at the drop of a hat, but not any more…At some point there will be [office] openings, but we have transitioned so well in most of our offices to work remotely and effectively with the tools that I think, at this point, the sense of urgency is not massively high.”

— Atul Bhatnagar, CEO of Cambium Networks Corp.

“There’s still a very good chance that we’ll return to a more normal work, school and life environment by Labor Day…We were a very heavily in-person culture pre-pandemic, and I believe there’s a lot lost when you can’t be together.”

— Oliver Kharraz, CEO, ZocDoc Inc.

“We’re telling people don’t come into the office and expect to sit at your desk because your desk is not going to be there. You’re going to come into the office and you’re going to be working in team rooms, in collaboration spaces.”

—Kevin McCarty, CEO of consulting firm West Monroe Partners LLC

“We would hope to have the opportunity to go back in the summer. The only thing that I’m concerned about—and I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but I want to be thoughtful—is follow the science. Tracking the variants that are coming up to understand: What is the protection from some of the variants?”

—Jonathan McIntyre, CEO of Motif FoodWorks Inc.

“Some people love working from home, and it fits their persona and style and productivity mode. Some people can’t wait to be back in the office and be around their friends and their workmates and to get that human connection around all the work that they do. And there’s a lot of people in between. I just think that’s the reality of it. We have that curve, as well. For most of our people, they’re missing it; they’re looking forward to being back in it. It might be three or four days a week—and flexible hours on each end.”

— Jim Weber, CEO, Brooks Sports Inc.

“Now you can potentially be in any city. Maybe, potentially, you can be fully remote or hybrid.”

— Steve Case, co-founder of America Online who created Revolution, a venture firm that invests in startups outside of major tech hubs

“That force was so powerful that people were willing to live in places that were increasingly uninhabitable from a cost and congestion standpoint…To say that just because we’ve been in this pandemic and we’ve tried this remote-working thing for a while that that is all completely undone, I just don’t buy it.”

—Ian Hathaway, a senior director at the seed accelerator Techstars and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who researches startup ecosystems, on his belief that any bullishness about going fully remote is skewed by pandemic circumstances

“We’re not going back to the way things were…I don’t believe that we’ll keep every space in every city that we’re in, including San Francisco.”

— Brent Hyder, chief people officer, Salesforce.com Inc.

Write to Patrick Thomas at [email protected] and Chip Cutter at [email protected]