CEOs say they'd give raises, promotions, or better assignments to workers who show up at the office

• US CEOs say they'd give raises, promotions, or better assignments to those who work at the office.
• The findings came in a survey from KPMG that showed how frustrated bosses are with remote work.
• Many workers also are frustrated and some are 'loud quitting' or just quitting over RTO efforts.

CEOs are really starting to hate remote work — and are willing to go beyond free pizza to get you to come in.

Their frustration is so strong that nine in 10 say they would hand out raises, promotions, or better assignments to workers who commute to the office, according to a survey released Thursday by KPMG.

Only 9% of the 400 US CEOs KPMG polled said they were neutral on rewarding employees who come into the office, while 1% said they were unlikely to favor workers who showed up in the office.

Big Tech firms like Amazon and Meta already are enforcing RTO mandates, causing angst among employees who "are going to extreme lengths" to make it in, Insider previously reported. "It's a mess," one employee said of Meta's RTO. Some workers are "loud quitting," while others are plain quitting over RTO mandates.

KPMG's CEO snapshot signals that the fight over returning to the office isn't likely to end. Outside of some of the big banks and high-wattage tech firms, many companies have settled into a mix of in-office and remote work.

CEOs' stance on hybrid work is shifting, but they "are not thinking that it will be this dramatic, turn-on-the-dime-type change as to how much employees are in the office," Paul Knopp, chair and CEO at KPMG US, told Insider.

He said it's going to be difficult for many leaders to get workers to give up the flexibility they've grown accustomed to. "It's actually really hard to put that genie back in the bottle," Knopp said.

The survey found only one-third of CEOs envision traditional office jobs as remaining hybrid, down from 45% in 2022. And remote work's glory days are in the past: Only 4% of CEOs expect to allow fully remote roles for those whose jobs were once in the office, down from 20% last year.

Knopp said many business leaders assume that having people back in the office more often will drive collaboration and productivity. But he said that's not a given. "We're still trying to determine whether or not that is accurate as a business-leadership community," Knopp said.

While the debate over where workers do their jobs rolls on, the CEOs surveyed report that their biggest operational priority is ensuring they can attract — and hold onto — top talent over the next three years.

About eight in 10 US CEOs said the biggest trends that could imperil the prosperity of their companies in the next three years were the cost of living, regulatory demands, and disruptive technology.

KPMG's survey occurred from mid-August to mid-September and involved 400 US CEOs of companies with at least $500 million in annual revenue.