Deloitte's "CFO Signals" report for Q2 2020 contains an abundance of information about companies' post-pandemic plans and the assumptions behind those projections based on a May 4 - 8 survey of ~150 CFOs of North American companies. The vast majority of companies (71% public and 29% private) had more than $1 billion annual revenue.
Notably, nearly 40% of respondent CFOs across industries don't expect to return to near-normal operating levels until the second quarter of 2021 or later; another approximately 20% are projecting near-normal operations as of Q1 2021. As shown here (p. 13), this reflects a substantial change in sentiment from Deloitte's survey in April, which reflected projections of near-normal operating levels among most respondents by Q4 2020:
By industry, responses vary fairly significantly, with Telecom/Media/Entertainment and Energy/Resources expressing the most optimism and Retail/Wholesale the least.
Looking one year ahead (p. 15), 75% of respondents said they expect more of their total workforce will be working remotely compared to pre-pandemic times; 71% expect their core businesses to be more automated/digitized; and 72% expect more of their finance work will be completed remotely. Nearly half (48%) expect to have a smaller real estate footprint.
See also the Executive Summary, these prior reports: "CFOs Weigh in on Return-to-Work and Impacts on Operations" and "CFOs Look Forward," and additional benchmarking resources on our Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources page. This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!