Overview
The survey, conducted for the Partnership by GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group), was open March 13-18, 2020 and collected both quantitative and qualitative data from more than 150 leaders representing 130+ companies. The results present a snapshot of a key period in the rapidly-evolving COVID-19 situation.
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.
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).
Key Takeaways
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.