PwC isn't panicked about this 'economic pessimism' — in fact, one exec thinks it's an opportunity

• CEOs that PwC polled late last year expect global growth to slow this year.
• But PwC's Wes Bricker thinks companies will use any slowdown to remake their businesses.
• Leaders have no choice. "No management team gets paid to languish," Bricker told Insider.

Wes Bricker, a vice chair at PwC, isn't quite as downbeat about the prospects for the global economy as some of the CEOs his firm surveyed in the final months of 2022.

Nearly three in four corporate leaders surveyed from more than 100 countries told the consulting firm they expected to see slowed growth in the world economy this year. It was the gloomiest reading of CEO sentiment on growth since PwC began asking the question a dozen years ago.

But Bricker told Insider in late January that he thinks the battle-tested CEOs who have managed to hopscotch through the uncertainties of the pandemic will work through today's problems — and, possibly, tomorrow's — so they can remake their businesses.

"No management team gets paid to languish," he said. "Management teams get paid to reinvent and grow."

Bricker said many of the corporate leaders he speaks with in his role as PwC's vice chair and US trust-solutions coleader are moving ahead with planning how they can change their companies even as these executives worry about what knocks the global economy might endure. For some top execs, the need to look further ahead is an existential one: Nearly 40% of surveyed CEOs told PwC that they didn't think their organization would be economically viable in a decade without transforming.

"We're in a period where business leaders are balancing that time that they spend on the next two years — to get through this economic pessimism — to a 10-year time horizon, where we remain a vibrant, productive business through a significant period of reinvention," he told Insider.

But Bricker acknowledged that there will be pain as some companies reshuffle how they're organized to meet shifts in their customer expectations, the pace of their growth, and the costs of their components.

These forces are part of what is pushing management in a range of industries, but notably tech and finance, to shed workers.

Still, Bricker believes companies will make the changes they need to and be better prepared for the coming years.

"I have optimism that we'll get through this adjustment," he said. "This is a correction."

And while there might be a reckoning in industries such as tech — that added workers at a blinding pace during the early years of the pandemic — Bricker sees areas like diversity, equity, and inclusion and sustainability as somewhat more protected from cuts than other parts of many companies. That's because efforts around diversity could help a company's workforce perform better, and sustainability investments can help companies boost revenue and shave costs.

"The strategies that I see business leaders really starting to focus on is not viewing sustainability as a luxury good, but as an essential element of business," Bricker said.

The idea of sparing workers where possible aligns with what CEOs told PwC in the survey, which gathered responses from some 4,440 business heads in October and November. PwC found that 60% of responding company chiefs said they didn't plan to cut their workforce within 12 months and 80% said they didn't expect to decrease compensation.

Upbeat economic news could have brightened CEOs' expectations since PwC ran its survey. The US unemployment rate fell to a 50-year low in January and there have been a string of economic numbers that indicate the pace of inflation is easing. And the International Monetary Fund last month said the global economy would likely sidestep a recession. 

To help retain workers, Bricker said, business leaders will look deeper into whether investments in areas like automation and data analytics are paying off so that the efficiency these efforts promise can help offset the costs of retaining high-performing workers that many employers fought hard to attract.

"Are we getting the return on better data capture and data analysis that we anticipated to run our business smarter — as well as faster?" he said. "Talent's hard to get. Skilled talent is even harder to get."

Keeping workers, in some cases, means some companies deciding to maintain flexibility in where and how people do their jobs, Bricker said, even as some employers have called employees back to the office. 

"What I'm not seeing is a snap back in the way of working to pre-COVID routines," he said. Bricker said he expects many employers to reexamine how they use their office space and to continue offering flexibility through accommodations like hybrid or fully remote options. "That is the future of working."