Back in the office soon? 45 CHROs told us what they learned after a year of Covid-19

Expanding on our work with Fortune, we recently interviewed 45 CHROs on the future of work. We conducted this study as part of NewtonX Current, our new proprietary research service.

The survey asked many multiple choice questions but exactly one open ended question: “What did you learn?” It was heart warming and eye opening to see the responses.

All the CHROs frequently mentioned employees, productivity, work, and home in their responses.

Interestingly, the CHROs were split across personal, employees or the business, with “the business” winning by a small margin.

For some CHROs, learning was personal.

“You have to be intentional to keep people engaged!”

“You can be productive anywhere.”

“I can do hard things and figure out solutions to problems I never encountered.”

“Work life balance is impossible.”

“That I enjoyed working from home a few days a week and many employees were as or more productive working remotely.”

Others thought first about employees.

“How resilient employees are. Teams have come together in incredibly creative ways to keep the culture of the company alive.”

“That employees can effectively work remotely and that you need to trust them.”

“Remote work only works for certain employees and roles.”

“Be flexible, patient and take time to ask your employees how they are doing. And earnestly listen.”

“We are resilient – joy is a choice!!!”

Most CHROs commented on the business.

“Be intentional about culture and relationship building and DEI work.”

“The amount of time it took us to pivot in March 2020 from office to home confirmed our technology is behind.”

“The future of work is remote and flexible working arrangements – we proved we could do it.”

“We have found that virtual meetings are very effective and we will likely see a 50% drop in our business development travel post COVID vs. pre COVID.”

“Companies are much more mobile than they think they are.”

NewtonX can deliver unparalleled insights to help make your most important decisions.

NewtonX is the only B2B market research agency that connects forward-thinking companies with the exact professionals they need to solve any problem. Our proprietary AI-driven search scans over 1.1 billion minds across 140 industries to find the highest quality expertise in the world.

72% of research leaders say they want help actioning and implementing their data. Perhaps related, 30% of businesses lose time and money due to bad data. Learn how NewtonX can help you get high quality data and better insights from your research with our innovative methodology. 

Get in touch or get a quote.