COVID-19 Survey Finds NYC Business Leaders & Largest Employers See Increased Testing and Healthcare Resources as the Key to Restoring Business Confidence

150+ of NYC’s Top Business Leaders Expect Significant Hit to Revenue, Place Most Trust in State Government to Manage Crisis

The Partnership for New York City, which represents the city’s  business leaders and largest private sector employers, today released a survey finding that top NYC business leaders rate increased testing and clear communication as the top steps government must take to restore business confidence, and see insufficient healthcare resources as posing the greatest threat to their businesses.

The survey, conducted for the Partnership by GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group), was conducted March 13-18 and collected both quantitative and qualitative data from more than 150 leaders representing 130+ companies. (See a full list of Partnership members). The results present a snapshot of a key period in the rapidly-evolving COVID-19 situation.

Key findings from the survey include:

• 95% of businesses have implemented work-from-home policies.
• 91% expect the crisis to moderately or significantly hit their industry’s revenue over the next six months.
• 97% of business leaders have confidence in the state government to manage the crisis (versus 79% confidence in the city and 61% in the federal government.)

Leaders see insufficient healthcare resources as posing the greatest risk to their businesses going forward, and rate increased availability of COVID-19 testing and clear communications from government as the top actions they want to see to restore business confidence:

• 3/5 of business leaders ranked insufficient healthcare resources to be the most impactful potential negative event on their business.
• 2/3 of business leaders believe the most important action to increase business confidence is increasing access to COVID-19 testing.
• More than 50% ranked the banning of travel in and out of New York as one of the threats they are most concerned about; and almost 1/3 said they were most concerned about public transit being shut down or unusable.

Download Survey Results

• Large Businesses
• Small and Mid-Size Tech and Startup Businesses

“All businesses are craving more data and more clarity to better manage this fast-evolving situation,” said Partnership Co-chairs William E. Ford (CEO of General Atlantic) and Steven R. Swartz (President and CEO of Hearst). “We felt it was critical to survey business leaders on what they’ve done so far and what they want to see going forward and to share those results as quickly as possible with government officials and the public.”

Kathryn Wylde, President and CEO of the Partnership, said, “The survey makes clear that business leaders fear most inadequate healthcare resources, closing the city off in a lockdown, and closing mass transit. The business community is working with government to establish the public-private partnerships that can and must see us through this crisis.”

To execute the survey, the Partnership turned to its member company GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group), a knowledge marketplace which connects business to experts for first-hand insights. “We feel an obligation to use our platform’s capabilities – which allow our clients to quickly gain insights from select populations – to help inform coordinated actions by government, the private sector, and other groups,” said GLG CEO Paul Todd. “It’s all hands on deck to weather this challenge.”