The Insight: on what CEOs are thinking about

This month at the Insight we’ve been pondering what keeps CEOs up at night. Is it the state of the economy? Climate change? What Rachel Reeves is going to announce in her first Budget on 30 October?

Handy then that we’ve just released our 2024 CEO Outlook survey …

Generative AI won’t take your jobs, say CEOs

Top of mind for CEOs right now is the race to embrace and embed generative AI and other technologies, according to our 2024 CEO Outlook.

If you’re panicking about what that means for your job, relax. Most UK CEOs reckon generative AI won’t fundamentally impact the number of jobs in the market. But it will put pressure on organisations to upskill their people.

Now in its tenth year, the CEO Outlook draws on responses from more than 1,300 CEOs across the globe – 150 in the UK – to shine a light on their biggest challenges and priorities. 

Here are some more of the findings:

• 79% of UK CEOs are confident in growth prospects for the UK economy, but 63% feel under more pressure to ensure the long-term prosperity of their business.
• UK CEOs say the top 3 risks to growth are: cyber threats, supply chain issues, and disruptive tech
• Just 55% of UK CEOs are confident they can meet their net zero goals by 2030.

Want to learn more? Check out our full summary of the UK findings and look out for more opinion and insights on the results from our experts. Tune in for ‘Insights for leaders’ on 3 October, when we’ll be finding out what the CEOs of Convatec, Salesforce, PZ Cussons and KPMG UK make of the results.

Read the UK CEO Outlook  

Economic Outlook: growth limited by weak productivity

When we surveyed them back in July and August, CEOs were feeling quietly confident in the UK economy. But is that confidence well founded?

Our macroeconomic experts published their latest forecast for the UK economy on Monday. Following a rebound at the start of the year, they’re expecting growth to have slowed in the second half of 2024. They’re forecasting growth of 1% this year, picking up slightly to 1.25% in 2025.

Longer term GDP growth could be limited in the medium term to around 1.1% a year, due to a historically weak pace of productivity growth.

Get the full forecast in our UK Economic Outlook – September 2024

Autumn Budget: will it be as painful as it sounds?

CEOs may be feeling somewhat discouraged by the gloomy messaging that’s been coming out of Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street. First Chancellor Rachel Reeves told us the public finances were in a far worse state than even she could have imagined. Then Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned that things would “get worse before they got better” – far less encouraging than the New Labour refrain of “Things can only get better”.

 While they were setting a more optimistic and reassuring tone at the Labour Party Conference, there was still talk of hard trade-offs needed to deliver economic stability.

 So, what does that all mean for the Autumn Budget? Just how painful will it be? Will we actually be left feeling relieved when it’s not so bad after all? Will we see any fillips to growth? Our tax experts will be following the announcements and providing an instant reaction live on the day.

Join our tax experts live on the day for their reactions to the Budget

 Clean energy starts in the home

Labour wants to make the UK a clean energy superpower. And it sees that as key to boosting jobs and investment, and delivering economic growth. That’s going to put the onus back on CEOs to up their game on climate change – especially as only around half of them are confident in hitting their 2030 net zero targets.

If we’re really going to achieve net zero in the UK, one of the biggest challenges is going to be the decarbonisation of homes. It’s an important challenge to tackle – a fifth of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions come directly from heat and buildings.

At our recent event on unlocking the energy transition, we brought together a panel of industry experts to help us identify what needs to happen. Here are the key takeaways:

• With a £250 billion investment needed to decarbonise homes by 2050, private capital will play a vital role.
• We should take a place-based and consumer-centric approach. A new national body would provide central co-ordination of the locally delivered decarbonisation programmes.
• We need collaboration between central and local government, financial institutions, and energy providers.

Watch the home decarbonisation event on demand

Let’s end with another stat from the CEO Outlook. Last year, there was a big reaction when we reported that 63% of UK CEOs expected corporate employees to be back working in the office in the next three years. Well, CEOs have doubled down on that position in 2024, with 83% now expressing that opinion. What do you think?